Dear comrade Terror: your political bankruptcy and hypocrisy: Part I

You wrote an “open letter” to the secretary general of the African National Congress (ANC), your leader and my leader Gwede Mantashe. It is the duty of all ANC members to assist each other with political education and assistance when these are found to be lacking. Seemingly you lack even an iota of political knowledge about the ANC despite the fact that you found yourself leading in its highest organs.

Your recent “open letters” have exposed a high level of political bankruptcy, populism and opportunism on your part. In order to spare you further embarrassment let me give you the ABC of ANC procedure, which is often taught to a member when they are not even serving in a branch executive committee BEC. If you wanted to give the ANC time to consider the issues you have raised and to resolve them if there is substance to your allegations you should have never written an open letter.

You should have simply written to organisational structures without seeking media glory because that is totally against democratic centralism, which I expect you to have known better, since you have led in the ANC before. ANC members might have seen this political bankruptcy when they ejected you at Polokwane.

Comrade Terror, you should have never written the letter to the secretary general, but to your branch secretary. Being an ordinary branch member that you are today, your first line of contact in our organisation is with your branch. You should have allowed your branch secretary to table your issue with the BEC and later with a branch general meeting.

It is only when you are unhappy with the outcome that you should appeal with the regional secretary, later on, the provincial secretary and then lastly the secretary general. This is simple organisational procedure that ought to be followed by all ANC ordinary members such as you and me. I wonder what makes you think you are special such that you can jump organisational procedure and shoot straight to Luthuli House. Your behaviour resembles nothing but that of a spoilt brat seeking attention.

The allegations you make about our organisation are profound, but are not backed with any evidence. Which member of the ANC has been “hounded out and purged” from the ANC just for “raising contrary views”? Ever since Polokwane the ANC has not expelled a single member, you included. Is this not a fake dive in the box to solicit an undeserved penalty? You are one to complain.

I remember the time in 2002 when you were sent to intervene at the Nyandeni sub-region. Without listening to both sides of the story, you went ahead and met your faction and came back to Luthuli recommending that some comrades be summarily expelled from the ANC.

The second time, with Dumisani Makhaye, it came out that the very same persons you had suggested be expelled were the actual victims in the Nyandeni situation. Had the ANC acted on your recommendation it would have resulted in ANC members having been expelled for nothing. In visiting the Eastern Cape to apologise to Mandela as comrade Jeff suggested, please do not forget to proceed to Nyandeni and apologise to those comrades that once looked upon you as their leader.

When you were still national chairperson of the ANC, NEC member Dumisani Makhaye racially discriminated against Jeremy Cronin and called him a white messiah. But because Makhaye expressed views which you agreed with, you never said a word of disagreement. Instead you were part of an NEC meeting that forced Jeremy Cronin (the victim) to apologise to the ANC. History is littered with stories of your quietude when anarchy serves you and noise when it doesn’t.

Do you remember that some of those that campaigned for your election in the ANC Mafikeng in 1997 supported you not for your political capacity, which you clearly lacked, but for the fact that they had been alerted that there were too many Ngunis in the ANC top-five lists, including comrade Steve Tshwete who you contested and defeated on a tribal card. Of course, as a new anti-tribalist, you never objected to this clear tribal support, I wonder why you were ranting about the 100% Zulu-boy T-shirts last year. This debate continues. Till next time …

socialist regards

Lazola Ndamase