GARETH VAN ONSELEN: The ANC’s death by regression
‘The ANC’s denial fuels resentment and anger, a natural response to obstinacy and conceit. But look below the surface and your rage will quickly turn more melancholic’
The ANC of 2017 can be described as many things, but of them all, ultimately, the most accurate is sad. It's a mess of an institution. Its members are largely complicit in some kind of idiocracy, as the party's collective IQ has been systematically lobotomised. Its ideology and language are antiquated, a tortured and mangled rhetorical call to the socialist glory days of a distant land. Service delivery has come to a grinding halt as rust and decay cause the governmental cogs to screech and jar, and then collapse. Internally, it is some kind of echo chamber where self-interest and arrogance bounce endlessly around once-hallowed halls dedicated to nobler things; and it is all bound together, a disparate collection of warring factions, by fundamental denial. It has slowed regressed to a child-like state. The denial is the saddest part. As protesters marched last week, the ANC hauled out from the cupboard a group of political Antediluvians to "defend Luthuli House". They sang songs abo...
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