‘The devastation of our rural towns is so complete it will take 30 years to restore some towns to any form of meaningful prosperity. Others will have to be shut down. Wiped off our map.’ Picture: Ayanda Ndamane/Independent Newspapers
Politicians are always campaigning. Since Donald Trump won the 2016 US election, every political act has been akin to a stop on the campaign trail. There is no longer an end to their campaigning.
The tragedy of all this is that politicians tend to show us only their bright side and their opponent’s dark side.
This week the spotlight fell on the first-ever South African marriage certificate issued which officially recognised the “type of marriage” as “Muslim” by The Department of Home Affairs.
DA ministers rushed to claim credit for it while the ANC claimed it had been approved before the GNU and that years of work had resulted in this finalisation of the process.
The DA has done in 3 months what the ANC couldn’t do for the Muslim community in 30 years. Well done Minister @Leon_Schreib 🇿🇦👏🏻 https://t.co/bldMhTesOK
— Dean Macpherson MP (@DeanMacpherson) October 25, 2024
The tragedy of the South African narrative is that there are so many low-hanging fruits from which to score political points that we are bound to see hundreds more of these ‘campaigning moments.’
The DA 2026 Municipal and 2029 General Elections campaign should have a simple election slogan which reads “The ANC messed it up, we’re here to fix it.”
The ANC’s visible incompetence is akin to Trump’s accusation of his opponents being “low-energy people”. If all the DA does over the next five years is fix roads and improve infrastructure, they could win both elections with a landslide.
For fuck's sake Deano. Don't be more stupid than usual. Leon Schreiber was whining about Afrikaans in Stellenbosch in July 2023 https://t.co/efLDWeOOiI pic.twitter.com/YpCrgZFHAb
— Andrew Fraser (@Arfness) October 26, 2024
The ANC and others to the left of them are all caught up in ideological battles and political rhetoric of the ‘80s when all that was desired was to live in safety and have food, education, healthcare and housing.
I was on an information gathering visit to the Northern Cape last week. The team I was with took us to Upington, Witbank, De Aar, Britstown, Springbok, and Pofadder.
The devastation of our rural towns is so complete it will take 30 years to restore some towns to any form of meaningful prosperity. Others will have to be shut down. Wiped off our map.
In one town, the District Mayor sits alone in a big office, with no one else in the building, while his officials are all crammed into another. Because he is a very important person.
In another, the water supply is continuously interrupted. How do those municipal officials drive to work each day and not see the pot-holed roads and collapsing infrastructure?
On the third day of my explorations, I wrote in my journal: “I saw more broken things than things that work.” This, tragically, is the legacy of the ANC.
The ANC’s failure to mature beyond the ideological rhetoric of the 80s and become a party which does the work of giving people a better life is one of its biggest failures. It is spending its life in the ideological cesspool and has dragged everyone else into it.
People want roads fixed, water to drink and bread to eat. They do not have the patience to listen to our million rand-salaried politicians debate the ideological merits of their political offering.
A school principal in a far-flung community close to the Namibian border told us that the children could not come to school because the school's water supply has been erratic. In the heat of summer, they don't have water during the school day.
How many school days will these children lose? Who are the civil servants, municipal managers, ministers and political parties responsible for the destruction of these children's futures? How many children will drop out of the education system because some civil servant has not attended to fixing the water supply system?
The ANC and other politicians across the political stratosphere who enjoy their obsessions with ideological warfare, are enjoying a disgusting luxury at the expense of dying towns and dying people. They need to get to work and talk about taps without water, broken roads and people who are starving to death.
* Lorenzo is a leader and veteran in the social development space who has worked for decades to address SA’s stark inequities.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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