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Dear MPs. The responsibility for saving the ANC now rests on your shoulders

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ANC members of the National Assembly face a difficult choice during the no-confidence vote in Parliament scheduled for Tuesday: to vote with their conscience or not. In this open letter, City Press reader CatsBell looks at the options facing them.

Dear ANC National Assembly members

If you’re surprised by this open letter from a member in good standing of the great unwashed, you can read a brief description of the context below. In brief, this letter forms part of a broader project: an open letter to South African democrats.

In the letter to democrats, I come out against secret ballots in Parliament. I believe voters should know how their representatives are voting. The crucial upcoming no-confidence vote is likely to be open though, but whether open or secret, I urge you to vote with your conscience, expressing the will of the people instead of that of the captors.

I know, it’s easy for me to say. I’ve seen what the retribution of the captors looks like – comrades who have spent a lifetime in the movement suddenly find all their avenues closed after dissenting. Lately there’s even been death threats against some of you, against the backdrop of ongoing political assassinations elsewhere in the country.

However, I believe all of this is part of the last kicks of a dying horse, and that it’s a successful no-confidence motion that can put it out of its misery.

So what makes me think that this time is different from all the previous motions of no confidence?

First because our captors are now entirely exposed. Particularly the Gupta email leak makes it impossible to continue to have reasonable doubt about the veracity of the state capture claims. None of you can reasonably deny it, and I can’t imagine that people who care about their reputation anywhere else than in captor circles could bring themselves to knowingly and directly support state capture.

Second, because it’s now increasingly obvious that the ANC national executive committee (NEC) is not going to address the issue. Until the NEC meeting in May, there was still hope that the NEC would recall the president from the presidency of the country. Now it’s clear that it’s highly unlikely to happen.

One of my “sub-letters” is addressed to the ANC NEC, in order not to skip a step, but I believe the chances are close to zero that they will do something before the December ANC congress, which is likely to lead to another bought election with a victory for the captors – and the sounding of the death knell for the ANC.

So the responsibility for saving the ANC now rests on your shoulders. That’s a major difference from previous no-confidence motions.

Unless I completely overestimate the character of many respected ANC MPs, my guess is that quite a number of you will vote for the removal of the president. Either way, as a politician, this is probably the most defining vote you’ll ever make. There will be your career as a politician before and after the no-confidence motion. Perhaps not immediately, but as the weeks and months and years go by after the motion, that’s probably increasingly what you will be defined by.

You may argue that you are bound by party discipline, just like the opposition, and just like political parties everywhere in the world, and I will agree with you.

I will also agree that the party can probably institute disciplinary procedures against you for voting with the opposition, and can probably succeed in replacing you as an MP, leaving you without an income, or even expelling you from the party. I know I’m asking for very, very much.

But not as much as the people asking you to live with yourself, and with others, after endorsing what is basically the betrayal of the people of our country.

And it’s not as if the alternatives look particularly rosy – less so, in my view. I think most of you will agree that if the ANC continues along its current path, there’s a fair chance that it will lose its majority in 2019. Let’s say it loses by just 1%, at 49%. That would a reduction of 53 MPs among your ranks, from 249 to 196.

But there’s also a chance that as labour, the SACP, ANC members who resign in the wake of a probably captor victory in December, churches, non-governmental organisations, opposition parties and others get their act together to form a broad coalition against a very vulnerable ANC (with slime engulfing the organisation little by little, over months of daily email scandals), support for the organisation could collapse.

So it’s not as if your career as an MP is very secure if you don’t make a stand. And if you don’t make a stand, you’d have the added reputational damage of not making a stand.

If enough ANC MPs support a no-confidence motion though, it could go a long way to ousting the captors and stopping the trend of falling support for the ANC, depending on how the NEC reacts.

My guess is that the NEC will not dare to replace 10, 20, 60, who knows, of their most high-profile leaders. It will be an admission of defeat for the party to replace so many senior leaders, and could trigger a split, something which the captors can ill afford.

But even if they do replace you, I believe you’d be welcomed with open arms in any other political formation of your choice. You have political experience, and you would have proven that you have integrity. There is much work to do before the 2019 elections and democrats will have to raise the funds to do it. And all the seats the ANC is likely to lose in 2019 will go somewhere else.

So while it’s true that the last kicks of a dying horse can still kill you, it’s also not that voting with the courage of your conviction is a dead-end lane, and that voting for the captors is without consequence.

I hope I’ll be able to tell my wide-eyed grandchildren the story of the “Magnificent 70” one day, about the 70 or so ANC parliamentarians who stopped the captors in their tracks.


What is this open letter about?

The open letter addressed to you forms part of a multi-part open letter to SA democrats, proposing a Second Republic - changes to our laws and Constitution that, in content and in spirit, will make a clean break with our captured present, and ensure we’re never captured again.

The reason why it’s addressed to you, is because I’ve been speaking about you in the letter, so it’s only proper that I speak to you too. After all, you have a direct role in what it is that I propose.

I encourage you to take a look at my open letter to SA democrats, particularly Part 3 and Part 4, where I discuss what I see as the major causes of our state capture problem.

I’m sure some of you may frown at the notion of a humble follower of the news, someone who has never stood in any party-political election - who is in fact currently not even a member of a political party - having the audacity to try to dispense advice to seasoned politicians.

My response is the same as the one I gave to ANCYL members in my previous open letter: a perspective from outside the hustle and bustle of political life may sometimes be useful, even if it’s only to get one’s ideas going.

From open letter to opposition parties

Please go easy on secret ballots

I understand that the main argument for secret ballots is that the safety of those who decide to follow their conscience by voting openly for the motion of no confidence may be threatened, and I agree the threat is both credible and serious.

However, a secret ballot is not the answer. A problem the size of our people’s representatives being prevented from carrying out the task with which we have entrusted them, is not a problem to “work around” with measures like secret voters.

It’s a problem to be confronted head-on. Even if the police can’t be trusted to protect dissidents as Mr. Malema alleges, then democrats must simply make another plan – chip in to hire trusted private security, for example.

How can we accept a situation where our representatives are being threatened to vote against our interests? What about all the votes that aren’t secret then? Are we to accept that all those votes are compromised by threats? We can’t accept that.

So if the problem has to be solved anyway, there’s no need to compromise our democracy through secret ballots. Voters must know how their parliamentarians are voting – how will they hold them to account otherwise? There will be no link left between parliamentarians and the voters who put them there.

You may argue that the election of the president is already by secret ballot, but for me that’s a flaw in our Constitution, a loophole that waits to be exploited. You saw what happened in Mogale City.

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