Dr EV Rapiti, Eastridge
The municipal election is probably going to be the most exciting elections we have ever had because the outcome is riddled with uncertainty.
Unlike previous elections, the major players, the ANC and the DA, were confident about winning constituencies, but in this election, the relatively new boy on the block, the EFF, has sent these two major parties into a worry mode.
Prior to the entry of the EFF, the two major parties felt very secure amid the less influential smaller parties like COPE, the ACDP and the UDM. The EFF has secured their position on the political landscape, as a force to be reckoned with, ever since its populist leader, Julius Malema, seized every opportunity to embarrass our president at every turn with his pay-back-the money campaign.
Malema shot to fame here and abroad with his irrepressible garrulous tactics inside and outside of Parliament. He was so persistent that the desperate Speaker, Baleka Mbete, was at a loss for words to control the young upstart, who treated his former seniors, including his former boss, the President, with unrepentant disdain.
Not even our president’s useless guffawing could save him from further embarrassment from the fiery Malema.
Malema did more damage to the Teflon-coated President than the 90 000 booing mourners could do at Madiba’s funeral.
The DA could not grow fast enough in the black townships because of its very white image, even though it has a black leader and because it was so vulnerable to chants from the very desperate ANC that the DA is a white racist party with token blacks in charge.
Lindiwe Mazibuko’s latest attack on her party, the DA, about male racism, falls right into the lap of the EFF and the ANC. The desperate ANC has no answer to the growing popularity of the EFF among the jobless youth of this country.
The ANC, sadly, like all revolutionary parties, start off well, like ZANU- PF but eventually go off track when corruption sets its ugly tentacles into the leadership. There is little reason to doubt that the ANC has captured the SABC in spite of ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe’s feeble protestations against the despicable action by Hlaudi Motsoeneng to ban all coverage of violence. The ANC is aware that most of the violent protests are the result of poor service delivery in the poorly-run ANC municipalities.
Hopefully the recent court ruling to compel the SABC not to censor violent protests and the reinstatement of the journalists that were unfairly fired by the SABC will give the public broadcaster enough time to correct their wrongs of the past two months.
In 1994 a majority for the ANC was the right thing because it gave them the power to correct the wrongs of the past, unhindered – 22 years later, this majority has become our downfall; their veering to unmanageable corruption has become unstoppable, both in Parliament and in our courts of law. Another year of them will spell doom.
Our vote may not get us a government that can deliver but it can reduce corruption by preventing any one party from winning the majority of seats in government.
