Johannesburg- We do not know what to make of Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele’s candid and incredibly pertinent question he privately posed to his ANC colleagues about what the ANC government is going to do to accelerate the delivery of services.
Is it a sign for the ANC to finally heed the call for better service delivery to the people or a panic button from a politician who is worried about the real prospect of losing power? Gungubele, as reported in this paper this week, posed the question during his presentation at the party’s annual lekgotla, which took place last week as the governing party attempts to prioritise the deliverables for the next fiscus ahead of the State of the Nation Address and the Budget speech next month.
Gungubele’s remarks demonstrate desperate times for the party, which appears to have lost control and staring defeat in the face because of endless failures and the glaring abdication of political responsibility to meet the nation’s expectations.
Gungubele’s ingenious assessment of the governing party’s failures is something the ANC has known for a long time but failed to make any reasonable and sensible efforts to tackle them. This is so because of the arrogance of power, which has killed many liberation movements.
Like many other concerned South Africans, we have decried the extreme levels of hunger that is gripping poor households in this country. Child malnutrition, poverty and unemployment which Gungubele referred to in his presentation have sadly never been tackled as national emergencies by the ANC.
It almost feels rhetorical when we constantly warn about high levels of corruption and the moribund public service that is highly politicised and not responsive to the needs of the citizens.
People almost feel like a broken record as their cries for a change in political attitude are regularly met with the scorn of an arrogant and big-headed political class. Truth be told, the actions of the current crop of ANC leadership do not suggest a party that is ready to renew and self-correct in order to tackle the most crucial challenges of our current history. The ANC is a party riddled with dirty factional and leadership battles.
The fights are not waged on the principle of bettering the lives of the people, but on access to the country’s resources. Little effort is invested in addressing access to the quality of public services, education and health systems, as well as curbing unemployment and poverty. More effort is instead directed at securing political office, which paves the way to speedy access to financial resources for personal gain.
Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi’s dire warning rings true – that the ANC must choose to make hard choices of cleansing itself “of factionalism and criminals, deal decisively with corruption, fix the state, grow the economy and slash unemployment”. Or maintain its current state of affairs, which will see unemployment pass the 50% mark, state organs collapse, the ANC itself dying or removed from office in 2024. The ANC mandarins must, therefore, not say they were never warned when that day finally arrives. We are, however, not going to say the end is nigh.
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa. To Subscribe to Sunday World, click here
