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With electioneering already under way, Sandile Gumede says the ANC’s struggle credentials are not enough to keep the party in power
While growing up in Emdlebeni village in Stanger, KwaZulu-Natal, we would make a soccer ball out of plastic bags that used to hold bread because buying the object in question was for those with deeper pockets.
And it happened that sometimes a boy from the family that could afford to buy a proper ball was not that gifted in the beautiful game.
So, come game time, he would want to be featured in the starting line-up despite his lack of talent.
But what would the coach do? If you don’t put him in the starting line-up, he goes home with his ball – and that would mean the end of the game.
If the coach sacrifices the better player to satisfy the owner of the ball (ubholalami), the team might lose.
Some might be asking where I am going with this preamble. Well, I am not really talking about football – at least for now.
We all know it is almost time to vote again and all politicians are now spending sleepless nights fighting to win the upcoming elections.
To coincide with that, the governing ANC celebrated its 107th anniversary last week in Durban.
What tickled my fancy over the past few days was President Cyril Ramaphosa’s statement in Pinetown that people failing to keep the ANC in power would destroy the gains of freedom over the past 24 years.
This is not the first time Ramaphosa has said something like this. When he was deputy president, he said that, if people did not vote for the ANC, “the Boers would come back to rule”.
To me, this was emotional blackmail, especially for those people who would be voting for the first time.
Some people in the governing party are good at emotional blackmail.
Of late, the ANC, and no other party, has done a lot to destroy the gains of democracy – it has been excelling in doing so.
Its leaders believe people should or would organically vote for their party simply because it is a liberation movement.
One would think that people should rather vote for whatever party they believe will change their lives.
If they believe the ANC has been doing well, they should vote for it. But if other parties are the beacon of hope, they should be voted for.
A critical assessment should be done by voters so that they make the right choice, otherwise they remain voting cattle.
All parties should earn votes – no party should be voted for simply because they fought Hendrik Verwoerd’s regime.
To me, that is not good enough.
We were grateful that the boy with a real soccer ball was kind enough to let us use it, but, like ubholalami, he had to earn his place in the starting line-up.
Being the ball owner did not mean that he was a great player. The same should be emphasised in politics.
Parties need to prove to the voters that they would work for them. In Africa in particular, complacency has been the order of the day for liberation movements in many countries.
Our governing party should learn from their counterparts in other countries, otherwise, one day, they will find themselves on the opposition benches in the National Assembly if they think people will religiously vote them into power without scrutiny.
Gumede is a sociopolitical commentator and journalism lecturer at the IIE Rosebank College in Braamfontein
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