One suspected that the ANC was nervous about its prospects in the 2016 municipal elections, but it appears that it has now grown into full-blown paranoia.
I would have thought fixing local governments where the ANC is in power - eradicating nepotism and corruption, putting skilled people in key positions, etcetera - would have been the best way to improve the ANC's standing among local voters in the eighteen months or so before that election.
Instead, the ANC is hitting out at critics and is trying to put lipstick on the pig.
That, at least, seems to be the reaction by the party's Western Cape secretary, Songezo Mjongile, in his hysterical response to my column on urbanisation and failing local government.
Mjongile is so hell-bent on silencing his party's critics that he resorts to old stereotypes not reflected in my column, like the accusation that I thought that "Madiba Magic" would have fixed everything and that I pretended that apartheid had left no legacy.
He attacks me for not attacking the DA where it is in power in local government, yet I didn't spare the DA at all. This is what I wrote: "I live in an area run by a DA local government and I'm very happy with the way I'm treated. But I'm a white middle-class person. I really don't see the same care being applied to my area's townships, and they need it more than I do.