The digital “dog ate my homework”. That’s the best the ANC could do when it reached into its party bag of excuses to head off the DA last week.
After a herculean legal tussle, the opposition party finally won its bid to have the ruling party hand over records related to cadre deployment. Only, some of those from December 2012 to December 2017 — when President Cyril Ramaphosa chaired the cadre deployment committee — are conveniently missing.
Enter ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula like a portly clown waving a dime-store magician’s wand.
The computer on which the records were kept crashed last year, he said.
Not enough? The person responsible for the information accidentally deleted vital e-mails.
Third time lucky: there weren’t minutes of the committee meetings anyway, so what does it even matter?
It’s the stuff of a professional bureaucrat’s nightmares. Files not backed up; e-mails deleted willy-nilly. Though full marks on frugality for hanging onto the same laptop for 11 years.
It all looks like a clumsy cover-up. Particularly as the cadre deployment committee’s first meeting of 2019 noted that the previous meeting’s minutes had been approved, according to a City Press report.
Nobody solves a problem like Fikile.
Mbalula must have come up with the apparent contradiction while zoning out at the recent “Forum of Supporters of the Struggles Against Modern Practices of Neocolonialism — for the Freedom of Nations”, held in Moscow. It was, apparently, about countering the evil neocolonialism of the West and protecting state sovereignty in the realms of “political, financial and economic, information and other spheres”.
Mbalula would probably have kept his Dolce & Gabbana banana suit firmly in the closet for this one, lest the conference ventured into the territory of cultural imperialism. And one can only wonder at “the meeting of minds” setting this “new world order in motion” — Mbalula’s words — if “Mr Fix” was among the luminaries in attendance.
In any event, there’s nothing like Russia hosting a talk-shop on the oppressed. And just as Orwellian was the death in detention of Vladimir Putin’s nemesis, Alexei Navalny, while the forum was taking place. The attendees, however, didn’t seem too concerned — about Navalny’s death, whitewashing despotism, or the fact that a country in full-scale invasion of another could, with a straight face, host a conference on colonialism.
That’s unsurprising given attendees such as North Korea. And, certainly, Mbalula never gave it a second thought.
Old wine, old bottles
If the ANC’s cadre deployment laptop has given up the ghost, the computer on which it keeps its election manifestos is going strong. At least, that’s what you could infer from the endless loop — the sheer mind-numbing repetitiveness — of its to-do list going back to 2014.
Take logistics. In 2014 it promised to expand ports, rail, pipelines. In 2019 it was still focused on modernisation and expansion of ports. Today the focus is on repairing the transport and logistics sector after decades of neglect. So, not working out too well then.
Then there’s public transport. The ANC has, for a decade now, aimed to improve passenger rail as a backbone of public transport (2014, 2019, 2024). Yet rail services remain a mess. Indicatively, when the Shosholoza Meyl returned to service in December, the Joburg-Cape Town trip was interrupted by cable theft. And the less said about the state of the country’s roads (also on the to-do list), the better.
Professionalising the public service; capacitating the National Prosecuting Authority; land reform; supporting failing local government; putting in place National Health Insurance; provision of (clean) water. All have featured in the party’s manifestos. None has been fully achieved. It is only the most ill-advised and populist of these — land expropriation without compensation and NHI — where there is any real movement as the ANC faces its toughest election yet.
The party pats itself on the back when it comes to creating jobs — which it has done — and promises to do more. But what it’s done so far falls woefully short of what’s required. In the fourth quarter of 2013, for example, unemployment was at 24.1%; today it’s at 32.1%. It simply can’t soak up the 600,000-odd new entrants into the job market each year.
Yet of all the sections in the manifesto, the jobs section is the most scant on detail — exactly four (repeated) bullet points. Creating 2.5-million “work opportunities” (continuing through the Presidential Employment Stimulus, expanding National Youth Service — no details on how this will be funded — and roping in civil society). Supporting SMMEs (again). Handing the problem off to the private sector. And promoting and monitoring employment equity.
And don’t forget the fight against corruption. That’s been on the cards since 2014. Ending state capture has been on there since 2019. Now the party says it must not only fight corruption; it must “restore trust and confidence” in its leaders. A hard task when politicians such as corruption-accused Zandile Gumede remain not just in the provincial legislature but have been roped in to drum up support for the party in KwaZulu-Natal.
Political expedience trumps substantive action. Every time.
The only new entrant on the smorgasbord of failed promises is load-shedding. That, the party acknowledges, requires “investment in energy [infrastructure] to end load-shedding and ensure a secure supply of electricity”. Precious little other detail given.
On the whole, the 2024 manifesto is an object lesson in stasis. It speaks to a party that’s as much out of ideas as it is out of excuses. Voters would do well to take note.
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