Isn’t ANC playing Zama Zama & Zuma Zuma with the lives of South Africans?

8 February 2016

Congress of the People wants to condemn in the strongest possible terms the war talk from the president of the ANCYL, Colin Maine. Inflammatory remarks from leaders must never be tolerated. COPE will consult with its legal team to formulate a possible charge of incitement against Colin Maine. We are seriously alarmed at the war talk emanating from the ANC. On Sunday evening Colin Maine was on television threatening civil war if the EFF continued with its action against President Zuma. Such bellicose war talk from a political leader is inflammatory and extremely dangerous.

While Colin Maine was all aggro Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking at the Old Peter Mokaba stadium in Polokwane was trying his best to placate fed up voters by undertaking not to play Zama Zama with the lives of South Africans. Tragically, that is exactly what the ruling party has been doing since 2009. It has become a giant lottery with politicians playing for top prize. Factionalists who win the slate, hit the jackpot. The Premier League, as has become public knowledge, is busy capturing the state from all sides and is draining resources away from the people. Deputy President Ramaphosa cannot do a thing. He is totally powerless against the premier league.

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa is observing first-hand the extent to which “slate politics, vote buying and gate keeping” did he condemned, have contaminated ANC politics and disadvantaged ordinary people. ANC politics is slate politics.

Prof Somadoda Fikeni made a telling point on SABC Interface on Sunday night. South African politics, in the main, he observed is personality politics. It is no longer about citizen activism and issues of the people. At Polokwane in 2008, factionalists elevated Zuma to top spot and most of those who raised him up joined him in feasting at the trough. They won the Zama Zama. For them President Zuma can do no wrong. He has become the dispenser of gifts on a scale never before seen in South Africa. The National Treasury has been depleted to keep ANC cadres happy and supportive.

The ANC of today is a gigantic self-feeding creature. It is not the liberation organisation of former times. Professor Fikeni believes that South Africans will have to resort to civil society activism to make any gains. At present, self-serving politicians have captured the ruling party and through that capture are now seeking to capture the state itself and the National Treasury. Business tycoons have also got in on the act and those who captured the President, Premiers and Mayors are also milking it as everyone can see. It is Zama Zama all the way.

The solution lies in what COPE did. The election of party president and top officials must be the function of the entire party membership. Every member of COPE will be involved, through electronic voting, in the election of top officials in three years’ time. That will be the death of slate politics. Without such drastic action, the ANC Zama Zama will continue unabated. The political elite will grow filthy rich and the poor will starve to death eating empty promises from the ruling party.

To us in COPE it is very clear voters in each ward should prevent politicians from seizing the ward with empty promises and T-shirts for their own greedy aim. Every ward should adopt a strategy to keep power with them and enforce 100% accountability on whoever represents them. If power is surrendered, as it has been in the past, service delivery will deteriorate even further. Ward activism must unite communities so that such communities can get the best deal possible. Voters in the wards must put an end to the Zama Zama of the ANC.  

The ruling party is offering civil war through Colin Maine. Deputy President Ramaphosa knows very well that the ruling party has been playing Zama Zama with the nation but he can do nothing against the premier league. The ace is held by the premier of the Free State. Zama Zama and Zuma Zuma will destroy South Africa. The time for ward activism and keeping power in the people’s hands has arrived.

Issued by Dennis Bloem, COPE spokesperson, 8 February 2016