LETTER: ANC leadership contest about survival and patronage, not SA

One thing becomes clearer with each day that brings us closer to the ANC national conference: the party’s leadership contest is not about SA and its many problems. The last thing on the ANC's mind right now is the 45% plus jobless rate, the debilitating level of violent crime or the spiralling cost of food and fuel.

The governing party should be focused on the fact that we go without electricity for eight hours a day, and yet it has no workable plan to fix it. And that so many state hospitals are failing death traps. Up to half of our freshly piped water leaks away, our rivers are polluted and our seas full of E. coli, yet the ANC leadership looks away, as it does with the carnage on our roads and violence in our schools.

There is a good reason ANC chair Gwede Mantashe was booed off the stage by Cosatu delegates, and why the party’s spineless president, Cyril Ramaphosa, didn’t even bother to show up. That is because for them, Zweli Mkhize, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma and all the other well-connected comrades it’s only about survival, position and patronage.

Despite their comforting words to the contrary, nothing else actually matters. We are on our own. 

Mark Lowe
Durban

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