South Africa – the Rainbow Nation of Mandela and the CODESA – is proud of its democracy. South Africa’s Constitution is iconic and has been lauded on the global stage as a thing of beauty. The democracy we built contrasts itself harshly to the false, hollow democracy of the Apartheid era, which split the nation along racial borders and denied the majority their political freedom… But there are some who seem to be stuck in that Apartheid past.
I’m not talking about right-wing groups that want another Nationalist regime. They exist, but they are not a significant and urgent threat to our democracy. The real threat, the most prominent remnant of Apartheid, is the ANC.
“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” – a quote from a guardian of the law who had gone rogue and abandoned the moral code he once held dear, in a film. Fictional as the person quoted may be, this idea that fighting evil is not without risk of becoming that which one hates is a matter of common philosophical interest. It should thus come as no great surprise that the ANC reminds many of the National Party they fought for so long.
The ANC – at first via legal means, and later via underground movements and even armed insurgency – is one of the notable organisations that fought the National Party in the Struggle. They took a big bite out of the NP, but sadly it seems that they swallowed it down and eventually it festered outwards until the ANC came to reflect their old opponents.
Why is this important right now? The recent No Confidence vote in Parliament, via the secret ballot, raised many important questions, and pressed many ANC politicians and supporters into revealing more of their beliefs than might have been the case otherwise. This means we got to see that festering reflection of the hollow “democracy” of the NP, carried upon the tongues of the ANC self-proclaimed “saviours”.
The ANC made it clear that they would not tolerate breaking of their ranks – despite a Constitutional Court finding against President Zuma that he violated his responsibility to the Constitution, the central pillar of our supposedly great democracy. To the ANC, their party line is more important than the Constitution. Asked why they were not allowing their MPs to vote according to their Oath of Office, which is made to the NATION, not their party, the ANC argued that their party constitution is more important than the Constitution of South Africa. The ANC, clearly, is an enemy of our Constitution.
The ANC (including one of their more manic supporters in an article ) have labelled those ANC MPs who voted to remove the most serious threat to our democracy as “askaris”, traitors, and so on. Considering that the ANC are even attacking their own people for putting their Oaths of Office above the Zuma faction’s interpretation of the ANC constitution, there can be no doubt that the ANC considers itself more important than the people who elected them – this is the opposite of democracy, and must be stamped out before we go back to the “fake democracy” that caused our people so much harm in the past.
“We should not have comrades who take the ANC for granted and who do not care about it. You hear a person saying ‘I’m following my conscience’. Please do not have your conscience‚ have an ANC conscience. The unity of the ANC is key and paramount to solving problems. Let’s not do otherwise. Many people died for this freedom and we are just toying with it‚” Jacob Zuma is quoted as saying. It seems ever clearer why Zuma is so prone to giggling when confronted with his own betrayal of our Nation: he considers his Oath of Office to the Nation no more than a joke, and as President of the ANC he considers himself to be the centre of the world. He is not a fan of accountability.
There is so much to be said here about the way the blighted ANC is working counter to the democracy of Mandela and the Rainbow Nation. I’ll leave it at this: your power and your voice is your Democratic Vote, and the Great Threat to our democracy is not from without, but from within where the ANC is undermining our democracy at every level by perverting and twisting demos kratos “power of the people” into a one-party dictatorship. The ANC has forgotten that they represent the people at all times, not just at the voting booth.
If you wouldn’t vote for the Apartheid NP, then don’t vote for the ANC: they are becoming more similar every day.
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