Former president Jacob Zuma Former president Jacob Zuma addresses an SA National Civics Organisation gathering in uMlazi on Tuesday. Picture: Doctor Ngcobo, African News Agency (ANA)
FORMER president Jacob Zuma has warned of looming danger in next year’s elections, where the ANC could find itself out of power in KwaZulu-Natal and other parts of the country.
Addressing a SA National Civics Organisation (Sanco) gathering in uMlazi on Tuesday, Zuma said the 2021 local government elections were a foretaste of things to come if the ANC leadership and the alliance, which he labelled as weak, did not change its ways.
“Like it or not, danger looms next year and there are plans to take over KwaZulu-Natal. Let us not fool ourselves because we saw what happened in the local government elections,” said the former president.
He said recent results in the elections were a backlash from the electorate over leaders who had become aloof, without demonstrating the desire to serve the people who had elected them.
Zuma called on Sanco to lead a national discussion on how democracy and majority rule should operate in the country.
“You should have a direct say on whether the state-owned entities should be sold off. Whether access to education should be for a select few and whether our public representatives really serve our interests when passing some of the laws.”
He lamented the increase of informal settlements, the rise of young people who were not attending school and other education institutions, cautioning that a country that did not invest in the education of its youth was placing its future under threat.
“That is why I vowed that during my (presidential) term education would be free and compulsory and this was not only stopped by opposition parties, but by my fellow comrades,” Zuma said.
He said he would use his remaining years to ensure that Sanco was strong as he believed it had a crucial role to play within the ANC-led alliance.
He told the crowd that the civic organisation should drive the national conversation on the kind of leaders the country needed and how they should be elected.
“The fact of the matter is that the majority rule only applies during the elections where the will of the people is listened to, thereafter people act on their own, forgetting about those who elected them. There are policies and laws that members of the electorate do not know about because they were not consulted in their formulation.”
According to Zuma, there was very little to celebrate in the country because of many challenges faced by the country’s citizens.
The civic organisation has scheduled a number of events as part of its campaign to engage the public on issues affecting them.
The hall was packed with community members, representatives from local ANC branches and members of the SA Students Congress (Sasco).