It’s the ANC’s turn to eat

Hard buns, substandard coffee facilities, a delayed lunch, a cold venue and a cheap substitute for Coca-Cola. What horrors the ANC national executive committee (NEC) was forced to endure this weekend, according to TimesLive.

This, amid reports that the party apparently ditched its usual venue, the Birchwood, due to outstanding bills. (Secretary-general Fikile Mbalula was adamant a change of venue was not about money.)

It’s a shame for the ANC’s 87 NEC members, really: the Birchwood’s full-day, R550-a-person conferencing package includes the kind of clockwork catering that would keep even the most demanding of hobbits happy: arrival tea, coffee and snacks; mid-morning tea, coffee and eats; a three-course lunch; mid-afternoon tea, coffee and eats. Real Coke too, one assumes.

More than enough to keep the famously hungry cadres sustained.

Still, the NEC was consigned to Joburg’s southern suburb of Ormonde. For a time, at least. Then its members were driven out of there by the cold – and, one might surmise, the venue’s apparent lack of true-blue American beverage. (In the NEC’s view, the venue it must have okayed previously had suddenly become a security risk.)

Which is how the delegates found themselves at the Germiston Civic Centre in Ekurhuleni. So what if this is a venue for actual government business – the ANC is basically running the government after all. And it’s free. So, onwards.

Until lunchtime, that is, when a delay in victuals saw our usually indefatigable NEC members reportedly refusing to participate further, since they were, you guessed it, hungry. Queue a two-hour interruption. 

Not to undermine the NEC’s pain here or anything, but while all this was going on, large portions of this country were going properly hungry. Dangerously so.

Food insecurity affects 63.5% of South African households, and 28.8% of  children under five suffer stunting due to malnutrition, according to a survey conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council. And 1,000 children die each year as a result of acute malnutrition. (Twenty-five died in just Nelson Mandela Bay in the past 12 months, Daily Maverick reports.)

And don’t tell the country’s 55,700 homeless people about the cold.

This as a direct result of an economy that’s stagnant, joblessness that’s north of 43% on the expanded definition, and the collapse of services. But by all means, let’s hear the party that’s in charge of this economic calamity complain about being famished due to a lunch delay.

Cabal of the compromised

The truth is, the human disaster is in no small part due to mismanagement, ineptitude and the corruption that seeps through the fabric of South African society – à la the ANC.

It’s worth reminding ourselves about this magnificent NEC. There’s Gupta bag man Malusi Gigaba; fellow Gupta minister Faith Muthambi, whom the Zondo commission said should be referred to the National Prosecuting Authority for possible criminal charges; and David Mahlobo, whom the Zondo commission also recommended be probed for his actions around the State Security Agency.

Also in the committee is Mr Digital Vibes himself, Zweli Mkhize, and Louboutin-lovin’ Dina Pule, who was axed as communications minister for allegedly handing a dodgy contract to her boyfriend. She was censured for lying to parliament, while the public protector found her guilty of misconduct and “persistently lying”.

On the lying front, there’s Bathabile Dlamini. At least she had the good grace to pay her smallanyana fines – of R120,000 and R200,000 respectively – after being found criminally guilty in the travelgate scandal and of perjuring herself in court.

More recent revelations include those around Thembi Simelane taking out a loan from a dodgy VBS middleman while mayor of Polokwane, and Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, who is reportedly under investigation over a dodgy tender when she was municipal manager of Ba-Phalaborwa. And then there’s Deputy President Paul “Diamonds are Forever” Mashatile.

In this context, you can imagine how laughable it was to hear President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his NEC wrap, talking about the renewal of the party, and how it should become the “driver of ethical, capable, activist leadership”. A little late for that, you’d imagine.

Sugar-free insights

For the rest, the NEC pow-wow sounded like the usual talk shop, with surface-deep analyses of what’s wrong with the country in the ANC’s care, and astoundingly obvious conclusions. Like the need to accelerate infrastructure investment, focus on youth unemployment, and fix network industries to drive industrialisation. (It turns out we need more competition in electricity – who knew?)

The NEC, belatedly, also seems to have woken up to the fact that local government is beyond broken – it is “the epicentre of service delivery challenges”, said Mbalula – and the body is even planning a special NEC meeting to discuss the issue further. It’s a decade late, sure, but at least the obvious collapse of municipalities is now evident to the ANC. 

Ramaphosa gave a little more direction when discussing US tariffs: South Africa needs to invest in the African Continental Free Trade Area and look for new markets, and the department of trade, industry and competition is putting in place interventions to assist exporters. And, he said, the government continues to engage with the US.

The president certainly sounded more conciliatory than Mbalula, who railed against “imperialists” seeking to subvert South Africa’s democracy and sovereignty. “If they want to bring sanctions on us, let them bring them,” he said. Which, needless to say, won’t help matters much.

In any event, Ramaphosa said we must act with urgency and purpose to limit the impact of the tariffs. Hopefully that means more urgency than the government has shown in appointing a new ambassador to the US, after Ebrahim Rasool was booted out of the country five months ago. Or in ensuring that special envoy to the US Msebisi Jonas actually sets foot in the country. 

Outside of suggesting an expansion of the government of national unity, discussions around the grand coalition seemed to boil down to face-saving measures after the ANC was roundly humiliated in last year’s election. 

The party is seeing “substantial progress” in some areas, Ramaphosa said; it has managed to “safeguard the core progressive policy agenda of the national democratic revolution”; it has been able to “defend the democratic gains and advance our transformation agenda”; and it has stood firm in the face of “pressure and resistance from the global and domestic right-wing forces”. Blah blah fishpaste.

And don’t forget the 1,000 people who are going to be meeting from August 15-17 to set the agenda for how the National Dialogue – a talkshop that will cost the taxpayer R700m – is going to unfold. Imagine every life-sucking conference you’ve ever been to, complete with “breakaways”, teamwork and excitable report-backs (let’s hear it for the labradors of the group). Now multiply that by a social compact, with perhaps a few thousand litres of full-sugar Coke.

You kind of hope there was more detail provided behind the closed doors of the NEC meeting, because Ramaphosa’s closing remarks smack of the kind of meaningless gumph the party spouts in its manifestos and January 8 statements. Which is all good and well if you have an appetite for rhetoric, if not for cheap Coke. But it’s less so if you can’t stomach the mismanagement of the country. 

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