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The pain of voting or not voting for the thieves you know – because they are dressed in your party colours – can never be relieved.
Either way, you cannot forgive yourself.
If you vote for your party with a candidate list full of crooks, you know your conscience will never forgive you; that is assuming you still have conscience.
If you vote for a different party, your sense of betrayal might never leave you. It will not be satisfactory to vote for a party other than yours.
The third option is to spoil the vote because you are not happy with your party and you do not trust or want to vote for opposition parties. This option is also not satisfactory.
The fourth option is not to vote at all. With this option, you throw away your civic responsibility as you’ll become a bystander in the determination of your future. This alternative is also not good for your conscience.
This is the emotional crisis faced by ANC members and voters before the elections on May 8.
Just look at four appointees on the ANC’s party list in particular. Environmental Affairs Minister Nomvula Mokonyane is at number 10 on the list.
She left the department of water affairs in a total mess.
Bosasa officials told the inquiry into state capture that the company had paid for electric fencing, perimeter lighting and CCTV camera systems at her house, that she was paid R50 000 in cash monthly and was regularly given groceries, alcohol and meat, as well as money for her relatives’ funerals – all while she was a stooge for former president Jacob Zuma.
Minister for Women in the Presidency Bathabile Dlamini – and the leader of the ANC Women’s League – was found by the Constitutional Court to have lied under oath in the social grants payments scandal.
She was also found to be “evasive” by Judge Bernard Ngoepe when answering questions, and was made to pay 20% of legal costs from her own pocket to two civil society groups that brought her mishandling of government to court.
Former mineral resources minister Mosebenzi Zwane flew to Switzerland on behalf of Zuma’s government with one of the Guptas’ associates in a private jet belonging to the Guptas to help them force the purchase of Optimum Coal Mine, and threatened Standard Bank with the law to stop it from closing private bank accounts – a practice unheard of in any reliable banking system.
And former public enterprises minister Malusi Gigaba got rid of a swath of parastatal board members to replace them with Gupta stooges, and twisted regulations at the department of home affairs to allow the Guptas to become South African citizens before the minimum five years, as per the law.
Gigaba was found by the Constitutional Court to have lied under oath.
These are the destroyers of South Africa who are now on ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule’s party list.
None of these candidates meets the ANC requirements as expounded in the policy document The Eye of the Needle.
As ANC members and voters, are we so helpless that we must accept known fraudsters on our party’s candidate list? What can we do?
The minimum we can do is demand the removal of all those implicated in state capture and the VBS Mutual Bank heist, as well as those on Bosasa’s payroll.
This is the minimum we can settle for. Anything less than this will torment us emotionally.
As people, we can only be judged by what we accept and tolerate. Our consciences will torment us for the wrong decisions we make today.
- Makgoale is a rank and file member of the ANC
