RSA: McKinsey to support High Court Review of ESKOM Turnaround Programme Contract -“McKinsey will pay back the fee in full if the Court determines Eskom acted unlawfully” (10.10.2017)

ANCWL Statement on the Smear Campaigns against the Public Protector (15.09.2017)

Open letter by ANC stalwarts -Sent to Secretary General Gwede Mantashe with a request that it be given to the ANC NEC (26.05.2017)

DA takes Molefe’s ‘redeployment’ to Eskom on judicial review (12.05.2017)

ANC Statement on the Passing of Sinn Fein Leader Martin McGuiness (23.03.2017)

Opinion: EFFs Malema to Mugabe – “time to say Goodbye”!

The Economic Freedom Fighter (EFF) founder and former African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) chairman Julius Malema is continuing to pound on the Presidency of Mugabe and his overstaying in power. It is from the same man that sought to learn from Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) Youth in 2010 to learn how to make Africa better. So with the lingering years in power and his loss of power inside the ruling party ANC have given way for Malema to address Zanu-PF and ANC differently, than in the past; in the recent year or so he has called Mugabe a lot and asked him to leave power. Still, as a foreigner Mugabe has asked who he really is, therefore the criticism hasn’t really broken the old man, who by some of his biggest supporters claims that he is in the bible.

Let’s see what Julius Malema said about Mugabe:

“The African Union (AU) need courageous leadership which will tell their own peers this is not right, you know like they did, like ECOWAS did. So we need more ECOWAS, we need SADC to say no to President Mugabe don’t you think it’s time to say Goodbye” (…) “We have a problem with him (Mugabe) wanting to stay until death. We believe there are so many young people who were inspired by him in his own country. If he inspires us here in South Africa, there must surely a lot of them who were inspired him in Zimbabwe who can take over from him and continue the legacy” (ZimbabweToday, 2017).

Well, if South African government and other nations inside the SADC community weren’t afraid for their own reign and their internal battles, than they would have interfered in republics and states that had big-men who wouldn’t leave in peace. The man who was a freedom fighter and got rid of oppressive minority government has himself become a repressive leader. So that the RSA politician to tell the President of Zimbabwe is a fresh breath of air, still it would be more possible if the South African government wasn’t it biggest ally. Even Thabo Mbeki as President didn’t give a hard enough nudge and put the ZANU-PF rigging machine into the dust. Instead he gave way and made it possible for Mugabe to linger.

It is a fresh one that an opposition leader from South Africa blasts Mugabe; it makes sense of the character and the will of Malema. Still, his former friendliness towards the Zanu-PF makes me wonder how real the will of change the man has. Since when he was an ANCYL leader he could learn from Zanu-PF Youth, now he wants the Mugabe administration and Zanu-PF to leave, as much as Malema wants President Zuma and the ANC to stop ruling as well. However, he will not as SADC to overthrow Jacob Zuma, as he asks them to act upon Mugabe.

Well, nobody explain the problem with Mugabe better than Mutsa Murenje:

“There is absolutely no justification for Mugabe or any other Zimbabwean to seek medical attention outside the country. We have enough resources to make our health services work for us. The millions spent by a single man (Mugabe) on foreign trips could be saved to fund areas that are lacking in our country. The best we can do is to find Mugabe a place in an old people’s home. That’s where he belongs instead of depriving us of the future we badly need” (…) “The Mugabe regime abuses State resources and international aid. Food is distributed on a partisan basis. Opposition parties need to be more visible and have a felt presence nationwide. We need to stay abreast on key issues affecting us. The role of the media on this cannot be overstated. Both the traditional and the social media have key roles to play in consolidating democracy” (Murenje, 2017).

So the Zimbabwean sees the issues themselves, the Malema paradigm is different from Murenje, both want Mugabe gone away and other to lead, Malema from South Africa wants the SADC together to bring Mugabe away from the throne, while Murenje wants social justice and freedom through political takeover. That is different ways, as the MDC-T and other parties are now questioned, as the other parties are also created on fallouts from the Zanu-PF instead of built on their own merit.

There are dozens of questions and needed strong civil society together with political will to bring the Mugabe era to an end. However, there are more who wish him gone as the #ThisFlag and other social activists that are detained for their will to question the power of Mugabe. The President and his rule of law, is that the justice is only for the given elite, the rest should be silent.

The time should have been up a long time ago, Julius Malema and others should address the man and show the illegitimate rule in Zimbabwe. True, Mugabe was once a hero, but now he is not. Peace.

Reference:

Murenje, Mutsa – ‘Of crocodilian leaders, passive citizens’ (08.03.2017) link:

https://www.newsday.co.zw/2017/03/08/crocodilian-leaders-passive-citizens/

ZimbabweToday – ‘Malema Urges African Leaders to Gather Courage And Tell #Zimbabwe President Mugabe To Go’ (08.03.2017) link:  http://zimbabwe-today.com/malema-urges-african-leaders-gather-courage-tell-zimbabwe-president-mugabe-go/

Zuma’s #SONA17 another spectacle of cold-blooded ANC with blatant disregard of the National Assembly and its Constitution!

Now that a few days have gone by and mind is put to the rest, the State of the Nation Address 2017 #SONA2017 of South Africa been held in the National Assembly and the dust have settled. We can still wonder if this was the outcome and the wished legacy that the African National Congress (ANC) wanted to leave behind. The speech of President Jacob Zuma will not be the important matter after the national tragedy; even the Greek legends couldn’t have created a masterpiece of this proportion.

Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) under Julius Malema or the Democratic Alliance (DA) under Mmusi Maimane couldn’t have wished for better audience to show the neglect and lost space under President Zuma. President Zuma has forgotten his heritage and what he carries with his position. Zuma is living on laurels of others, but not honouring it, instead he and his allies are eating of it. They are eating so heavy that all meat is scratched off the bone and digested.

Even The Congress of the People (Cope) leader Mosiuoa Lekota wouldn’t have thought this would go this far, even the so the South African Communist Party (SACP) Blade Nzimande must think that the freedom fighting days of ANC and wish for a equal distribution of goods and wealth is long dead in the ruling party. If it was so the ANC would not enrichen their elite and new-wealthy men and woman who loyally are eating of the government plate; instead of building progressive and clear-cut initiative to create work for a broader base of the citizens. Those days are long gone and forgotten after the term of Thabo Mbeki.

Zuma had to bring the National Army into the chambers where the speech of the president was about to happen, as much as the Police Officers presences on the streets was like a lock-down from the get-go. Like Zuma was preparing for a show of brutal force and not a honouring the Parliament and its constitution. Not like he has respected before, he has only had eager for power and not for running it for a common good. That MP Mapisa Nqakula needed to gazette legality on the 9^th February to make sure the public of legality of having the army in the Parliament between 5^th to 10^th February. Zuma has many loyal servants that honour him instead of the constitution. Nevertheless, that is just a floosy disgusting paper right, aye?  

No matter if an ANC MP created a fuzz with words and the ANC Parliamentary Speaker Baleka Mbete would have been Nobel in his approach. Instead of dialogue or even giving space, he expected to be a loyal servant only to Zuma and not to the rule of law. There are not many who doubt where the loyalty of Mbete lays, not with the codes of the sacred chambers of Parliament, but instead with the man who is the executive of the Republic. ANC has certainly forgotten their roots and their mission, the quests and their direction as a political movement.

What even more insulting after the violence of removing EFF and the DA walking out of the Parliament as a result of the misbehaving ANC MPs, the ones left behind started to sleep when President Zuma was addressing them. Well, there wasn’t anything serious left other than empty tin-box lies and deceit from the man-in-charge. Who has no scruples and no mercy for his opposition!

Zuma will now not tango with his enemy or even try to shadow play with the opposition, as the local election we’re insulting to the ANC and their ruling regime, that they lost important towns and places they have never seen others having mayors and local governments post-apartheid. That is the estate and the cracking into the party organization and the strain the chaos of corruption has left behind under Zuma. Something that not a puzzle of magic wand or public display can change, the heartbeat and the pulse is out of whack.

Zuma and his cronyism aren’t benefiting anyone nearly except his men and woman. The rest are left behind and on unknown terms as the leadership of ANC skates by with no concern of their reputation or their legislation. The procedures and their neglect of the value of institutions or government companies are proven with the delayed 2015 report on Eskom, that we’re released the day after Sona17, because ANC wanted another scandal than this one in the news.

Zuma wanted to be released from fatigue and disgusted with the sleeping MPs and the attacking opposition. He wanted to be claimed to be corrupt and neglect of his role as executive of holding the report behind locked doors. Just like he wanted to silence the Capture of the State report, but that one became a hot-potato he couldn’t keep in the archives until it was meaningless.

Now the SONA17 have put a new giant stain on the ANC, the Zuma administration and the National Assembly that prefers defending the Executive or defending the rule of law. As some say the constitution and the laws that built the Republic of South Africa. They doesn’t matter for Zuma or his cronies, but it means something to ones living in KwaZulu-Natal, the Orange State or anywhere else in the republic. Peace.  

COSATU: ANC Leaders should not play cute with principles that have served the movement and stood the test of time (14.01.2017)

The ANC’s January 8 Statement: Much Ado About Nothing! – NUMSA Statement on the ANC’s January 8th Statement and Celebration (04.01.2017)

#WeAreANC: A Campaign gone wrong w/historical perspective!

The African National Congress (ANC) are about to hold their 105 year celebration on the 8^th January, the ruling regime and party, that has hold government since 1990s after the end of Apartheid. Which all is splendid thing, they are on their third President or third Executive if you may. First one was the pivotal leader and executive Nelson Mandela (Madiba), than their there we’re the quiet storm Thabo Mbeki and the one that ousted Mbeki, the all-powerful hand of the President Mbeki, Jacob G. Zuma who is now still commander-in-chief in South Africa.

His reign is not without controversy, as his ruthless behaviour and his acts to control the ANC, has left other behind, the ones that we’re hardliners under the Apartheid feels left behind. The elite and the corrupt are the ones that are close to the regime. The ones that are paying and eating of government contracts are the one loyal to Zuma. The others who we’re loyal to the party in the past has become disenfranchised like workers unions and even parts of ANC Youth League that we’re under the wings of Julius Malema has created a movement out of the ANC.

The EFF is an direct reaction not only to the ruthless leadership of the presidency under Zuma, but also to the under achievements done under the decades under ANC rule. The ANC has had the opportunities; instead they have enriched themselves and their donors. This wasn’t the intention during the struggle to get to power.

“Motshega (2010: p95) states that: ‘One of the original purposes of the ANC was to bring together a wide variety of different ethnic groups and tribes, to bring about unity and cooperation between people of colour’. In the period from the ANC’s establishment in 1912 through to the 1950s, ANC ideology was dominated by African nationalism. The ANC sought to further black interests, while white participation in the black African struggle was limited. ANC membership was exclusively black throughout this period. The formation of the Congress Alliance in the 1950s, which facilitated political cooperation amongst black, coloured and Indian activists saw a more integrated approach to the ANC’s liberation effort” (Twala, 2014).

O.R Tambo, 16 Dec 1971.

By all means the forging of ANC happen in a different and within history where the context of the South African experience is not similar with today. Still, the value of unity and cooperation is still as important today as it we’re in the early 1900s. It became more on ‘Black Struggle’ as the xenophobia and draconian rule of the white minority extended into ridiculous measures where the torture and separation where beneath all we as outsiders to that time can comprehend. Where a tiny minority took total control and forced fellow brothers and sisters to small-payments and squatting while minority lived in wealth. Therefore the ANC turned the way it did, because they needed a fair voice and justice for their kind and salvage society where the separation was creating two-societies within one republic. Therefore the politics of healing and forgiving within ANC after apartheid shows the stature of majority peaceful transition we all can hope other nations can do in the future.

As the transition was happening and people worried about the momentum of the release of Mandela, Mandela himself said this, which proves his commitment and belief:

“There is no such plot,” Mandela told a news conference after a two-day closed session of the ANC’s national executive committee. He added that the ANC is “unanimous about working with the government to bring about a democratic transformation. And the method we have chosen is that of peaceful negotiations.” (Kraft, 1990).

This shows the powerful history of the ANC and their rise to power from suppression and horror. We can see that the current ANC NEC and Leadership seem to forget in their riches and their hold of power. Zuma seem to be more entangled with wealth creation of his family and use the connection into the corporate contracts of the state, than actually create welfare and job security for the average South African, the South African that we’re important reasons for the existence of the ANC.

#WeAreANC is a missed opportunity, a missed staged event of something that could be profound and meaningful for a party that started a fantastic journey in the midst turmoil turned into possibilities. That even at one point got it to be the most progressive and economic prosperous within the sub-Saharan nations. They got even parts of the growing economic nations of BRICS. So the rise of ANC brought with economic progress and positive legislative changes that we’re only bringing hope. That even put the light dimmer on the freedom fighter from Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe who had years in the sun since his Lancaster House agreement and freed his Rhodesia from minority regime under Ian Smith. So President Mandela made him inferior and also like an ugly step-child in the international community. That has been kept like that since the knowledge of the Gukahundi massacre.

So with this in mind, this should also be remembered:

“The ANC as an organisation in fact never voted in favour of armed struggle. Mandela was given the task of persuading the sceptical ANC president, Albert Luthuli, to accept the policy retrospectively. Luthuli refused, but he conceded that he could tolerate the military organisation Umkhonto weSizwe if it was entirely separate from the ANC” (…) “As the ANC’s grip on historical memory loosens, rethinking the past becomes a politically explosive activity. I have lost count of the times that radical, angry young black South Africans have asked me why the transition from apartheid left so much of the country’s wealth in the hands of whites. Many Afrikaners wonder how, from a position of strength and in control of a proudly undefeated defence force, the National Party managed to give so much away in such a short time” (Ellis, 2014).

This is still vital today as the elites under the ANC is a small figment of the context in South Africa, the townships and the low-payed underclass is still as big as before, as much as the Republic has also a big population of immigrants from Zimbabwe and around Africa who seeking work in the nation who is famous for the progress and being an open-society. Therefore the reaction between today’s ANC and the foreign interference is also important to understand the party, which it is today:

“In recent times, the ability of ANC-led governments to pursue a coherent foreign policy that reflects the historical ideals of the party has further been undermined by the ever-widening divisions within the party. The frictions within the ANC that came to the fore during its 52nd National Congress in Polokwane in 2007 have been accompanied by a fragmentation in policy orientation within the party, a phenomenon that has also affected foreign policy. As different voices champion and defend positions within the ANC, foreign policy has increasingly become incoherent and has in practice drifted away from the founding values and principles of the party, which are eloquently articulated in official government documents. The extent of this deviation is such that the same ANC that so vigorously championed the cause of African unity during its days as a liberation movement has today become a divisive force on the continent, as illustrated by South Africa’s move to head the Commission of the African Union at any cost” (Nganje, 2012).

But just as the PR Team of ANC isn’t coherent with the feelings in the communities, even after the important loses of local elections in major cities and townships to the DA and other opposition parties; the time for a new breed and a change of policies within the government and ruling party comes more vital for its future. The neglect of the common core and the creation of the party are now open cracks as potholes on the streets. The tarmac is tired and the funds are diverted.

That is why the reaction to the meme’s and the scandals of late comes with the #WeAreANC, as the Gupta and Eskom cases are now the spotlight of the ruling party, not their rich history or their tales of liberation. So the ANC are now blaming the Democratic Alliance and Economic Freedom Fighters for the retorts and smug attitude to the campaign. Like they needed to plan for the opportunity to bluntly address the cronyism and corrupt maladministration; that has lingered in the National Assembly and in Government during the recent decade under President Zuma.

Even if Zuma has survived the explosive Capture of State report of November, the fall of the Public Protector Thuli Madonsela and the other impeachment of the Executive have failed during the 2016. Together with other acts of malice and ill-intent to misuse funds and state to gain riches. It was time for the ANC to eat after the fall of the peaceful transition government under Mandela. The ANC lost their soul while waving the flag of intolerant measures under the Anglo Leasing deal:

“If Mr Zuma becomes the ANC leader he is almost certain to be the country’s next president after the 2009 general election. But he too is dogged by allegations of corruption and is facing indictment by the same special police unit, the Scorpions, that pursued Mr Selebi” (…) “The Scorpions are investigating Mr Zuma after his former financial advisor was convicted two years ago of fraud for bribing him over a multi-billion dollar arms deal by South Africa” (…) “Mr Mbeki sacked Mr Zuma as deputy president, a move that divided the ANC, but criminal charges were thrown out of court last year before a full trial. The Scorpions appear ready to press new charges that could derail Mr Zuma’s bid for the presidency” (McGreal, 2007).

So the Arms deal that brought massive amount of counts on the current President and brought down Mbeki. That one is still hunting in the shadows as all of the alleged crimes that have been done by Zuma. Zuma has more allegations and litigations that any President on the planet, well, only less than soon sworn-in Trump in the United States. There are certainly a picture that world would have erased, that Zuma is the most alleged-corrupt President.

The promises of a grand party, for the citizens and for progress have gone astray. Certainly, Zuma and his team could have thought better after a scandalous year of 2016 to unleash on the world #WeAreANC. That is just giving fuel to the fire. The burning flame on the allegations and the current affairs of the ANC gives way for discussions of their missteps and maladministration that hard to salvage. Save a party like this should be possible, but the rotten core has to be up-rooted. That cost and will take time to rebuild. But if they want to live on the heritage and not wealth than the ANC has to do so! Peace.

Reference:

Ellis, Stephen – ‘[From our archives] ANC suppresses real history to boost its claim to legitimacy’ (03.01.2014) link: http://mg.co.za/article/2014-01-02-anc-suppresses-real-history-to-boost-its-claim-to-legitimacy

Nganje, Fritz – ‘The influence of the ANC on South Africa’s foreign policy’ (02.11.2012) – Proceedings report of a roundtable organised by the Institute for Global Dialogue

McGreal, Chris – ‘Notes on a South African scandal’ (11.10.2007) link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/11/insideafrica.southafrica

Kraft, Scott – ‘Mandela Denies ANC Plots a Takeover : South Africa: He asserts peace talks are on course and rejects police allegations’ (27.07.1990) link: http://articles.latimes.com/1990-07-26/news/mn-966_1_south-africa

Twala, Chitja – ‘The African National Congress (ANC) and Its Ideological Shifts Over Time: Attempts to Define or Re-Define Its Ideological Identity?’ (September 2014).