How stupid do you think we are?

So we South Africans are a bit stupid, fine, we all can see that there’s something wrong with the socio-pathologies which dictate our lives like rape, murder, violence, abuse and the silent genocide against HIV-positive people.

But when it comes to doing something about these socio-pathologies, we entrench the stupidity by choosing the more stupid options. Prior to 1990 South Africa chose a legalised form of slavery (called apartheid), and since 1990 we have chosen this softly, softly approach which says, “no matter how seditious the idea, we must have some form of public discussion about it, which inadvertently gives legitimacy to the proponents of the idea”.

So in 1990, when the ANC had nothing, apart from the foreign diplomatic goodwill brought in by the exiles and the sparse smattering of politically astute activists brought in by the UDF and MK, we chose to listen to them just because Nelson Mandela was listening to and speaking for the ANC.

And from 1992, when the white people voted in their referendum to officially end apartheid, we have had this preoccupation with being “nice to white people”, just so that their European cousins would continue to invest in South Africa. Now this has over the years become the logic which says that Afrikaners are white Africans and thus indigenous people.

After the transition to democracy in 1994 we have had this tolerance which said that no matter how much incompetence the ANC demonstrated from 1994 to 1999 we would, because of the Madiba seal of approval, give them another chance to prove that they could govern effectively.

Thus despite having spent the better part of the 106 years from 1893 to 1999 virtually bankrupting the Congress Movement, the ANC, not content with simply overspending on state expenditure and ensuring that they paid their comrades to become subcontracting mandarins, then decided that the unions’ pension funds had to be used to bankroll “empowerment” deals.

Under the guise of BBBEE the unions have been put into a situation over the last ten years where their investments have no doubt been diminished by three things: the overspending of these empowered companies, the questionable value of the underlying businesses and the market collapse since GW Bush became US president. In fact, one might suggest that just as the cognoscenti were taking their money out of the market, that someone was advising former president Mbeki to get the unions to pour our (pension) money into the market.

Nonetheless, having wasted $5 billion buying junk military hardware, having spent the last 10 years trying to use this “big-ass arms deal” as the supposedly “Machiavellian” means of denying JZ the opportunity of succession, having wasted our time and a ton of public money and having needlessly hogged the media’s limited space, this matter of where and why the unions made these investments has had little room to breathe.

And so we came into the reign of president Mbeki and Mr Manto, the ANC’s treasurer-general, who ensured that from 1999 to 2009, the ANC went from bust, broke and in debt to being worth in excess of R1 billion. Not bad for an organisation whose sole source of revenue is a R12-a-year membership fee for each of the less than 600 000 people. However, since that’s only R7.2 million a year, and since that’s only R72 million over the decade, that must mean that each member of the ANC must have donated an extra R1 700 to the ANC over the decade and that the ANC didn’t spend any money between 1999 and 2009.

No wait, that’s impossible, but anyway who cares, because we know three things, firstly that the large amounts of pre-1990 donor funding to the ANC has all but dried up, secondly that it is illegal for non-profit, public-benefit organisations to provide assistance and funds to political parties and thirdly that 100% of the ANC’s new wealth, largesse and patronage has come from the recycling of and forward solicitation against state expenditure.

That is that the ANC deploys cadres to government where these commissars issue contracts and licences to other cadres-in-business, such that these cadres-in-business then outsource and subcontract the deliverables to actual service providers, before returning the cream back to the ANC and its network of cadre-mandarins.

What is called money laundering in the real world is called “the ANC’s financial success story” in SA. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Mr Manto was wrong when he said the ANC had been strengthened financially, I’m just saying he was lying about the source of the money. And factually since some portion of these donations came from people who aren’t members of the ANC — then we must ask what influence was sold in order to “earn” this R1 billion?

So the ANC overspent our tax money, recycled the cream and then said — hey look we made R1 billion. Now I personally wouldn’t trust this sort of logic with the responsibility of managing so much as 10c of my money and yet, more than 10 million people gave these thieves the keys to control our government. And so I must ask why?

What were you promised? I for one as an undergraduate student was promised free higher education, my fellow unemployed people were promised 500 000 new sustainable jobs a year, while the trade unions and the Communist Party were promised control of government.

Suffice to say that neither the ANC, nor any part thereof, or any ANC-aligned organisation had a cogent plan for sustainable, free higher education, before, during or after the elections and that despite Minister Blade Nzimande having promised to give us free higher education, he was unable to develop a cogent plan. So much so that this proves that neither the ANC nor the government has the intellectual capacity to simply replicate a sound plan which they were advised of in March 2003.

Further to which the trade unions and Communist Party have had to return to making their demands in the street and going through the ordinary processes in order to get what they want despite holding key cabinet seats and ostensibly the Presidency. And they have been told in public by their own leaders like Gwede Mantashe that the ANC will not be dictated to by its partners.

Finally I’m not even going to talk about the missing jobs because at every turn in the last decade some pseudo-presidential cretin has promised us these jobs. The promise has always had something to do with short-term jobs created as a result of public expenditure on something called the expanded public works programme, which I fear sounds a bit like the dig a trench, fill it in, dig it up again approach of other public works programmes.

And let’s be honest about this — if the ANC actually had any real intention of empowering the weak and the underprivileged then surely they would start with the informal traders, who are at the bottom of the economy, by helping them to turn their cardboard, plastic crate and wooden plank shops into viable micro-enterprises, home industries and co-operatives?

So no, I don’t think the ANC needs any more time in power, I don’t think the ANC has any great intellectuals or statesmen icons to wheel out to placate the crowds and so no. I don’t think the ANC is being honest about the state of our country as it is. No amount of half-understood poetry, no amount of football diplomacy, no amount of trade visits or conferences, no amount of parties and catered chows, no amount of political double-speak and certainly no amount of political opportunism (yes, I’m talking about the DA, Cope, IFP+, ID, UDM, VF+, ACDP, MF etc here) will ever be able to make up the missed opportunities of the last 15 years.

So though I am not a punitive person, I will say that clearly the ANC is guilty of electoral fraud in respect of the false promise — in aid of soliciting the “student vote” — of free higher education and that those who aided the ANC in committing this crime, being the ANCYL, Sasco, the young communists and their SG Blade, must also be seen as being guilty of electoral fraud.

Evidently someone has told the ANCYL this already because when it became clear to the ANCYL that in fact they had committed electoral fraud — because they could not deliver free higher education, Cosatu/SACP control over the ANC or 500 000 jobs a year – the ANCYL decided to nationalise the mines.

This would enable the ANC to give Cosatu/SACP/NUM what they have always wanted and enable the ANC to make the new mine owners responsible for job creation and university/college bursaries. If Cosatu and the SACP controlled the output of minerals (and thus energy) the ANC would control SA’s supply of foreign currency and ultimately the South African economy.

I think it’s better to simply charge the ANCYL with fraud in respect of the false promise of free higher education than to allow the ANCYL to follow the Mugabe plan for destroying an economy through nationalisation and price controls (where a wage rate is a price control on labour costs). Once the mines are nationalised then privatising them into the hands of a Cosatu + SACP + ANCYL “empowerment” company would be easier wouldn’t it?

Do me a favour, if you are a political operator who is in any way stealing from me, my people and/or my country, pack up and find another tin-pot, little, Third World dictatorship to call home while you loot and pillage it because there is no-one who can save you as there is enough dirt to put half your cabinet in jail — just on the basis of the source of political donations and the recipients of state expenditure.

I have officially had enough of corruption and criminals pretending to be leaders — you’re not fit to speak for me, you’re not fit to represent me and you’re not fit to lead me, catch a wake up. We South Africans are not as stupid as you evidently think we are and we’ve decided that this is your last term in office.

From Curries Fountain, the ancestors gave the ANC life in 1893 and in 1990 the ancestors chose the ANC over everyone else, but now the ancestors have been angered by the scores of the dying and the multitudes of the starving. The ancestors have been angered by the suffering of the young and the old alike and they have been angered by the selfishness of this consumerist culture which says me me me and mine mine mine.

So Hamba Gahle uANC Hamba Gahle !!! Go find some other Mickey Mouse country to rob. And while you’re at it change your slogan to the ANC Lives and the ANC Steals!!!