Come election day, my cross will be for a party that guarantees us the realisation of the aspirations of our liberation struggle, writes Thami Mazwai Share Article: PREDICTIONS of reduced majorities for the African National Congress (ANC) and gains for the rest are once more making the rounds, reminding us all it is election time. However, what continues to astound is the naivety of the pundits who equate an election in South Africa to one in the UK, France or the US. This simplicity flabbergasts. Four issues have to be looked at, as they will determine the outcome. First, talk doing the rounds is that issues such as unemployment count against the ANC. The arguments are modelled on trends in western countries, where the economy determines results. Such comparison is misdirected in a country recovering from the most evil system of discrimination. Yes, people want jobs and better lives, but of more urgency is that apartheid be dead and buried. At the moment it is still alive and kicking, reflected in South Africa’s socioeconomic profile. Thus, regardless of the controversies of the day, blacks are going to look at this inequality and remember from whence it comes. Second, the reality is that the majority loves the ANC. Understandably, as this organisation, not forgetting the Pan Africanist Congress and Azanian People’s Organisation, liberated the country. Whites even enjoy democracy the most as they are free from the guilt and fears of the past. You do not give your liberator marching orders just like that. Let us not forget that in the 1970s and 1980s, as the world campaigned against the apartheid government, whites voted for it in increasing numbers. The emotions that spurred these hundreds of thousands to vote for a National Party (NP) that advocated and implemented apartheid will also drive the former victims of apartheid to ensure the ANC-inspired democracy we enjoy survives into the future. Third, people then say that the Democratic Alliance (DA) is the alternative. The DA is a white party with former NP stalwarts safely ensconced in it and influencing policy. To prove the point in typical NP fashion, it then picks two black faces, Lindiwe Mazibuko and Mmusi Maimane, from wherever. These two nobodies, with no pedigree or record in the liberation struggle, are then paraded as the faces of a progressive black South Africa. Presto! The party is now nonracial or black. Indeed, we are back in the good old days when the NP would manufacture the Matanzimas, Mphephus, Thebehalis or Mangopes and then parade them as authentic black leaders. Some people really suffer from this disease of divining leaders for indigenous Africans. In any case, are they really saying that Mazibuko and Maimane can be Thami Mazwai’s government? This is sheer hallucinating, but understandable in the babalas of the festive season. Fourth, people say the ANC has failed to transform the country, as if building a new country has a formula and timelines, regardless of the environment and the legacy inherited. Using the first 20 years of liberation as a yardstick, compare South Africa’s progress to that of former colonised countries in South America, Asia and the rest of Africa. With all its faults, and serious ones at that, our government has done far better. Ask the people who have electricity in their rondavels in the remotest of our villages, and the people who now own their matchbox houses in Soweto and other townships. Let alone the young blacks and women graduating with qualifications that were a pipe dream just yesterday. We even have black pilots. And — ye gods! — they are even in the South African Air Force, where they fly the latest fighter jets and, believe you me, do somersaults in the air. Finally, and this is the clincher, most voters are not blind to the fact that there are determined efforts to undermine democracy in Africa and prop up leaders who will protect and pursue the interests of the West. Hence, a former colonial master lurks in the background in every unstable African country. It is these efforts to recolonise Africa that make us clear which way we should vote. It is thus critically important that only a party that was in the liberation struggle should govern a liberating and transforming South Africa. Thus, come election day, my cross will be for a party that guarantees us the realisation of the aspirations of our liberation struggle. Nothing less. • Mazwai is chairman of Mtiya Dynamics, specialists in enterprise and supplier development.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 08:53:05 +0000
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