While walking up Riebeek Street on Friday, alongside me was a young man sporting ANC colours from top to toe. He looked very proud to be wearing the ANC colours, so I asked him whether he would be asking President Zuma "to pay back the money?" He burst out laughing thinking it extremely funny. He did not even attempt to counter my teasing. He was probably one of the thousands of rent-a-crowds enticed in some or other way to attend the birthday bash oblivious of the controversy between the ANC and DA.
Marius Fransman, accused of having co-opted the minstrels to cancel their annual event to attend the ANC celebrations instead, behaved true to form, knowing that this would be the only way to boost the party's numbers as well as give it a "coloured" face. In the meantime, De Lille was fuming about the grant the City awarded the minstrels meant to keep the troupes bipartisan. But with the ANC's direct access to the National Lottery, they milked it for a whopping sum of money to boost their political agendas, reducing the City's grant to "money for face paint."
But I digress. The crux of the matter is this. The reason the ANC decided to celebrate their 103rd birthday in Cape Town is twofold. One, they deeply desire to "take the province back" from the DA as they constantly threaten to do; two, they know that this province, which they constantly tarnish as racist and stuck in the apartheid ditch, will not boo President Zuma as all the other ANC-dominated provinces have done since he ascended the throne.
That is the great irony. The ruling party knows that this racist province has manners, even though we don't like the party. That is why it spent millions on bussing people in, renting crowds, enticing the poor with tea-shirts, and the rich with procurement deals. It knows its foundations are wobbly.
It has consistently undermined the Constitution by its track record of maladministration, bad governance and corruption. Zuma, no longer knows how to purge the party from the detritus that has seeped very deeply into its culture, so he makes promises and veiled threats. Instead of turning this country around with a new vision of clean administration and hard work, it now tries to out-EFF the EFF with its mindlessly destructive socialist rhetoric - of land expropriation, of loyalty to the unions, of demonising the opposition. Using language appropriate to the pre-1994 era, it accuses the Democratic Alliance of perpetuating apartheid. It has even threatened ‘to liberate' us from DA rule.
In a weird sort of a way, the ANC envies the DA-ruled Western Cape. Here things happen; services are rendered; hospitals are built; and schools function better than in any other province. Despite the doctored matric results to make the Western Cape look bad, schools here achieve more degree admissions than any other province, while it is alleged to be behind other weaker provinces. The mind boggles.
We no longer trust matric results. We know the results are inflated, because without this intervention, the results will be worse than they really are. Cheating between teachers, pupils and the education department has become endemic and the automatic promotion of failed grade elevens makes a mockery of our education system, consistently rated as one of the worst in the world.
While Zuma focuses on land redistribution and placating the unions, the education of black children is worse than it has been under apartheid. The perpetuation of its decline makes me believe that the ANC, like Verwoerd, believes that keeping the poor uneducated will keep the ANC in power. How else do we explain the government's inability to improve education when poorer African countries are getting it right? That is the question.
This article first appeared in Die Burger.
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