ANC: Don't lose sight of the wood for the trees

It is interesting to see how many people are of the belief that if you are highly critical of personalities within a party that you cannot, surely, be voting for them in an election. That if you place, as I have, the fight against poverty and the need for transformation above all else as I have repeatedly stated I do, then that should be subjugated to other factors which others believe are far more compelling.

In context — if the ANC and Jaco Zuma in particular are shrouded in corruption which has seen the end of the Scorpions, Vusi Pikoli, the arms deal and the rest how can anyone ever vote for them? Throw in Zimbabwe, Aids denialism and a foreign policy that beggars belief and you’re left gasping at the insanity of someone ever putting faith in that party. Moreover, surely if someone is aware of all these shortcomings then a vote for Democratic Alliance, who have far more integrity, or Cope, is the order of the day.

In essence, vote for a party who are far more honest even if you disagree with the main thrust of their thinking.

Of course if we factor in the enormous amount of sleaze and corruption surrounding the Republicans and Democrats in the USA and the Tories and Labour in the United Kingdom, based upon this theory, nobody should ever vote for them. In the case of the Democrats, Americans have waived away the Clinton sex and Whitewater scandals to return the party to power across the board. The Republicans who were leading the presidential race during the South Ossetia invasion were ready to forgive the worst global financial crisis, an ill-conceived war in Iraq, the most unpopular president in living memory, the worst foreign relations in US history and an administration responsible for rendition flights and Guantanamo Bay in order to elect John McCain. That they didn’t was down to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, AIG, et al, which signalled the onslaught of the global financial collapse. Even then tens of millions of Americans voted Republican.

No corruption? As things stand now, there is an investigation into the tens of billions allocated to rebuilding Iraq which seem to have gone missing. This will dwarf the Madoff scandal. Obama is currently struggling to bring the enormous disaster that is US healthcare back on stream. A former Halliburton subsidiary is implicated in bribery scandals involving a British solicitor who was caught paying hundreds of millions of dollars to Nigerian government officials for the award of a government tender. This list is endless. Yet when issues of security are considered priority, Americans — as we saw with South Ossetia — lean towards the Republicans. If it is economy related then Obama was going to be their choice. The issues which they considered their priority — not sleaze and scandals — drove their buses. If it were otherwise the elections would have seen the lowest voter turnout in US history, which the presidential election was anything but.

What do you do then if your priorities are seeing the transformation of the masses and the fight against poverty but you also appreciate the fact that the party whose thinking on this matches yours happens to be riddled with problems brought about in the main, not by policy but rather the dishonesty of the individuals applying it? Vote for parties of integrity whose thinking is totally at odds with yours?

In my case I vote for the party whose thinking matches mine on what I consider the priorities and attack those policies, individuals and groups within the party which I believe are wrong. In addition I promote those policies of other parties I agree with in other areas. I have repeatedly endorsed the policies of the Democratic Alliance and Cope where I believe they are of benefit to South Africa. As I have said in response to a question from a reader, if the DA had the same thinking on the masses as the ANC I would vote for them.

That would marry integrity and policy.