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Over the past two weeks, the country’s two biggest political parties went another step further to show their disdain for South Africans.
On Thursday, the official opposition marched to the offices of the governing ANC’s investment arm Chancellor House in Joburg. Its leader, Mmusi Maimane, declared that: “Chancellor House is nothing more than a money laundering front for a shameless and morally bankrupt ANC.”
He went further to say: “You see‚ the Chancellor House here in this building was set up by the ANC for one purpose only: to make them lots of money. And not by competing fairly on a level playing field. Chancellor House was created for the sole purpose of using its influence in the ANC to win massive state contracts for the companies it teamed up with.”
This attack comes from recent revelations that Chancellor House was paid millions in dividends and barely disguised kickbacks and consultation fees by Japanese company Hitachi to secure Eskom tenders.
Hitachi agreed to pay R255 million to the US Securities and Exchange Commission to settle charges of corrupt payments.
A week earlier, the ANC said the bigotry displayed by MP Dianne Kohler Barnard showed “the depth of systematic racism in the DA”.
Kohler Barnard had shared a post on social media that praised apartheid leader PW Botha. The ANC said she “expressed the views shared by many in the party”.
ANC spokesperson Zizi Kodwa said: “She expressed the core values of the DA. That is why the party can’t see anything wrong with the outrage. They don’t understand it because she expressed exactly the views that they tried so hard to hide.”
The problem with the two incidents is that both parties chose to react quickly and offer sound bites to the media without looking at themselves first.
The ANC and DA are secretive about who funds them and have refused to publicly tell South Africans where they get their money to run their campaigns.
Activities like these at Chancellor House thrive under this veil of secrecy and until both parties take the plunge and open their books to the public, corruption will rule.
When it comes to taking action against comrades accused of wrongdoing, the ANC takes the cake for this.
You just have to read the findings of the Public Protector, which the party has not acted on. They stretch from a village in KwaZulu-Natal to the public broadcaster in Joburg.
Follow me on Twitter @DumisaneLubisi
