After six decades in the ANC, party veteran Mavuso Msimang has called it quits.
Msimang is jumping ship as he believes the party was experiencing dramatic decline in popularity, “which is attributable to widely held perceptions that its members and deployees are corrupt, that the organisation has a high tolerance threshold for venality, and that the deployment of unsuitable people accounts for the government’s deplorable levels of service to the public.”
He said he was disappointed that the party had failed to eradicate corruption which was inherited from the apartheid government.
“Yet, three decades later, the ANC’s own track record of corruption is a cause of great shame. The corruption we once decried is now part of our movement’s DNA. This has had dire consequences for the most vulnerable members of our society,” he said.
“Over four million people live in shacks that are euphemistically referred to as ‘informal settlements.’ And in every town, there are people whom we call beggars, who collect at traffic lights and in town squares. They are not beggars of course, for that is not their identity,” he said.
He said though the party has managed to develop and grow the black middle class, there was a sea of low income earners who die before ambulances can reach them, or perish in the hallways of overflowing, under-resourced public hospitals.
“As ANC leaders publicly proclaim ownership of obscenely wealthy homesteads and other possessions and send their children to the best schools in the land, there are still many South Africans whose children continue to be exposed to the risk of dropping into pit latrines in poorly equipped public schools and dying horrendous and humiliating deaths.
The letter is below:
