I feel liberated – thanks to the ANC

Dear ANC

What an election! Best TV in ages. Hope you gave some of that R1bn to the SABC for its local content procurement.

Now, I know you are wondering what happened, so I thought I’d save you spending even more money on hiring consultants and write you a letter.

And let me start off by saying, I am still grateful to you for the liberation struggle. Benoni in the 1980s? What a shithole. You could hardly breathe for the stifled air. Downtown Joburg of 2016 is a place of creativity, dynamism, humour, amazing fashion. Right now, Joburg is one of the most amazing cities on earth. Your man, Parks Tau has done a pretty decent job – especially for a middle-class lass like me.

Which is why I was really confused about who to vote for. For much of the past 22 years, I quietly offered you my respect, patience and hope. I would defend you to the racists of this country. I was on your side, even though you never noticed. But recently, with every Number One cackle and corruption scandal, every attempt to dismiss us, silence us, play us off against each other, you have dulled those shiny emotions.

Thing is, I am angry with you. Really angry. I am angry with your love-affair with foreign capital – western, Guptan, Russian and Chinese. I am angry with your inability to create jobs and lift people out of poverty, perpetuating inequality, resentment and crime.

Why are we not promoting a decentralised solar power industry? We have so much sunshine. Why have you not pushed through with land restitution so that people can have dignity again and we can really begin to put the past behind us? Why are the majority of schools in the township and rural areas offering sub-standard education? Why are you not doing everything you can to prove the racists wrong and show just how brilliantly a black man can run a country?

To me, it’s like you have morphed into another elite in a country which already values elitism over humanity.

So, as you can imagine, I felt it was time that I did not offer you yet another vote of thanks for freeing the country from the claustrophobic oppression of the apartheid state. That instead, I stood together with my fellow South Africans and offered you a lesson, which is this:

We are not your people, as you so often like to say. You are our government. And like you, we too love this country. It’s our home, and we want to make it better – together.

So I am thrilled that our metropolitans are going to have to be run by coalitions, where politicians will actually have to work together. I feel energized, enlivened and… well, liberated. So thanks again. And best of luck with the coalition talks.

Claire

PS. I heard Mantashe say that low voter turnout had worked against you. You do realise that not pitching up, is kind of the same thing as pitching up and drawing a picture of a showerhead on the ballot paper?

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