Dear friends and fellow South Africans,
In revealing its 2014 election strategy to the media this week, the ANC in KwaZulu Natal exposed a little too much of its true character. Amid the standard evasive nonsense and political spin, this is one instance in which voters should really take note of what the ANC is saying.
The provincial secretary, Mr Sihle Zikalala, held court and announced that the ANC was gunning for total control of KwaZulu Natal. They don’t see the need for an opposition, which they intend to “wash out”, and they don’t want to have to work with any other party. Total power is clearly at the top of their agenda.
This was evident when Mr Zikalala said, “Our task is to consolidate the support of the people of South Africa for the ANC. Once the ANC gets that support, the task of the ANC is to render service delivery.”
I beg to differ. The ruling party already has a mandate to render service delivery. That is the compact they made with the electorate in 1994, in 1999, in 2004 and again in 2009. They cannot put service delivery on hold, to first see if people will vote for them in 2014. That is holding the electorate to ransom.
How many times have people complained that they only received services if they were ANC supporters, and that services were withheld from supporters of the IFP?
We hear that complaint often, particularly around by-elections. Now, ahead of a national election, the ANC in KwaZulu Natal is bluntly saying, ‘vote for us first, then we’ll do our jobs’.
I cannot understand this kind of arrogance where a party expects patronage before it will deliver. The IFP, like every other political party in thriving democracies around the world, knows that you have to work hard for the vote. You have to prove your worth and give people a reason to vote for you. That reason shouldn’t be the fear of services being withheld.
It repulses me to see the ANC taking advantage of the poverty and hardship of many South Africans, particularly in KwaZulu Natal, by handing out food parcels and delivering services only when they campaign.
We saw this even in the North West, in Tlokwe, just before the highly contested by-election last month, when 1500 people suddenly received title deeds to RDP houses. The houses are ramshackle and already falling apart. In fact, one collapsed more than three years ago, and with her title deed the owner received a pile of rubble and bricks.
There is no real political will from the ANC to serve our people, unless doing so is tied to a political benefit and the assurance of a vote.
I recall a Mail & Guardian interview with Mr Senzo Mchunu earlier this year, in which he gave the bold exposition that “The ANC has been built from blood, from tears, from destruction and one-partyism”. In that interview he laughed about how the ANC had taken KwaZulu Natal in 2009. They did it, he said, by having the ANC President, Mr Zuma, arrive at rallies in a helicopter, by using ANC-branded Minis and having musicians play at chisa nyamas.
Surely a more honourable way to win an election would be to deliver good governance and prove leadership integrity, competence and sound policies. That is not a naive way of looking at things. It is the only way to look at things in a country like ours in which poverty, hardship, crime and unemployment are constant companions of countless people.
There were other revealing statements in the ANC’s media briefing this week about its KwaZulu Natal electoral strategy. One was the odd focus on former President Thabo Mbeki’s role in the campaign. Mr Zikalala took pains to point out that Mr Mbeki has a responsibility “to campaign and vote for the ANC”.
This fixation with Mr Mbeki is likely in response to growing criticism within the ruling party that President Zuma is building an all KwaZulu Natal leadership at national level, to the exclusion of ANC leaders from other provinces. Some commentators made allegations that Mr Zuma was brought in to break the burgeoning of a so-called “Xhosa-Nostra” within the ANC, but the pendulum is now swinging in the opposite direction. Now some commentators talk about a so-called “Zulu-Nostra”.
The ANC’s obsession with total dominance and the creation of a one-party state, despite the obvious clash with democracy, is somehow explicable. There are many factions within the ruling party, all pulling in different directions, which make an iron-fist leadership tempting. Aside from the provincial and ethnic divisions, there are also the demands of the SACP and COSATU to contend with.
One of the most immediate challenges faced by the ANC is the opposition from their alliance partners to the National Development Plan. Opposition parties, economists, business and analysts have all agreed that the NDP is good policy.
This week, even the International Monetary Fund threw its weight behind the NDP.
But the fact that the SACP and COSATU don’t want it, means that the ANC is likely to abandon the NDP for fear of losing the votes that their alliance partners deliver.
A final statement on the ANC’s KwaZulu Natal election strategy that deserves comment is the deeply arrogant and insulting line by Mr Zikalala that, “We want to liberate people of Nongoma and Ulundi through a landslide victory during the 2014 election.” The electorate in Nongoma and Ulundi are free, and they have freely voted for the IFP, despite every dirty trick and empty promise of the ANC.
This suggestion that they need liberating is meant to convey that democracy has not yet come to Nongoma and Ulundi, because they are governed by the IFP. That makes my blood boil. Democracy is most alive where the opposition is strong and people have a choice of who to vote for, other than the ruling party. What the ANC is trying to do, by eliminating any opposition in KwaZulu Natal, is create an autocracy. The fact that they are doing it by jovially handing out food parcels and tying service delivery to votes, does not make the plan any less sinister.
The ANC’s deep-seated ambition to “wash away” the IFP in KwaZulu Natal is not new. Their pursuit of political hegemony in a democratic South Africa began long before democracy, when Inkatha became the target of the ANC’s People’s War and some 20 000 lives were lost to a black-on-black low-intensity civil war. Then, Inkatha leaders were assassinated and replaced within the community structure with leaders loyal to the ANC.
The tactics used today to destroy and replace the IFP in KwaZulu Natal are different, and less obviously evil, but they threaten to produce the same end result – the death of democracy and the beginning of South Africa’s slip into a Zimbabwe-style nightmare.
Without a strong opposition, a strong IFP, democracy will falter. We dare not let that happen, and we dare not let it start in KwaZulu Natal.
Yours in the service of our nation,
Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi MP
