LETTER: If ANC lives, SA will die

The past few months in SA have been daunting. From water outages to fuel hikes, an increased cost of living and, to top it all, load-shedding. 

While our president, Cyril Ramaphosa, faces his own battles within his party over the Phala Phala saga, one cannot help but think the daunting situation referred to above will only get worse.

I say this with confidence because as the governing party, the ANC has a track record of putting party issues first and SA last. In this case it is likely to be the upcoming ANC elective conference first, and load-shedding last.

A recent news report on Jacaranda FM quoted Ramaphosa saying the following: “Eskom gives me sleepless nights.” By “Eskom” he surely means Phala Phala.

This quote is an insult to South Africans who have been forced to endure the continued outages of the past 14 to 15 years. Meanwhile, the president and his ministers enjoy the benefits of generators, powered by the “GOOD” minister, Patricia de Lille.

It is the SA population that is having sleepless nights because they have to wake up in the wee hours of the morning to switch off appliances before load-shedding to avoid damage. This is  what keeps the nation up at night.

Our country’s prosperity is just a distant dream — a direct result of the very movement and its cadres who played a major role in the liberation of SA and her people from apartheid. Now that very liberation movement has become the movement of destruction, theft and patronage.

I believe the daily load-shedding should be enough motivation for our youth to take civic participation seriously. It cannot be that we complain about corruption, load-shedding and everything else when most of us do not even attempt to register to vote. We certainly tend to take our elections for granted, yet the ballot holds so much power even though we think it doesn’t.

What we are forced to endure today should be an eye-opener to every SA citizen, young and old. The time of sitting back while watching from a distance is long gone, for if we continue to sit back we will lose our country once and for all.

We are on the brink of total collapse. It is, therefore time to dim the ANC’s lights. Our next election, come 2024, will be the most important one since the dawn of our democracy. This is the election that will determine the ANC’s fate, and analysts have already predicted that its support will drop below 50%, paving the way for a multiparty government.

It might seem far off, but 2024 is around the corner. In fact, I am pretty sure South Africans cannot wait any longer to get rid of the ANC. The 2024 election should be dubbed the “Election of Hope” because it should see the death of the ANC at the polls.

It is now up to all South Africans, especially the youth, to take a stand and save SA. For if the ANC lives, SA will die.

Zeke Wareley
Political studies & public administration student, University of the Western Cape

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