Carol Paton’s assertion that “there is no political alternative for most voters to migrate towards” is frankly outrageous (“Ramaphosa after the storm: crucial decisions lie ahead”, July 19).
It is deeply condescending to the SA people because it implies that South Africans cannot make up their own minds and exercise their hard-won democratic freedoms to choose a different way.
Her intrinsic logic is that South Africans are not suited to democracy because they cannot conceive of voting for a party other than the liberation party, no matter how badly it governs. Yet Zimbabwe’s rigged elections show that Zimbabweans are capable of voting in great numbers against the party of liberation. Why should South Africans be any different?
Or she believes voters do have the wherewithal to vote for an alternative party, but that the DA is wholly unsuitable for them as a choice. Yet the point of voting is to vote for the party that is most likely to deliver, honestly and efficiently, the things people need to get ahead in life — jobs, quality basic services, better education and health outcomes, safety, fiscal sustainability. The DA is the only party that has proved it can deliver on these.
So both these options are clearly false. More likely, this is a thinly veiled punt for the ANC, evidently her party of personal choice, and an equally thinly veiled attack on the DA, which Paton appears to despise for reasons she has not adequately articulated.
It serves neither SA nor this newspaper to allow Paton to use its platform to drive her personal, damaging, irrational and condescending opinion that voters have no alternative to the ANC.
Sandy van Hoogstraten
Camps Bay
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