2024 Elections – ‘Only the racial card can save the ANC’

The ANC will no doubt eagerly play the racial card to try and save itself in next year’s elections. It is the last trump card government has up its sleeve. All its other cards speak of failure.

This conclusion can be drawn from the fact that President Cyril Ramaphosa exploited a racial incident at Maselspoort in the ANC’s statement of 8 January by creating the impression that only white people can be racists.

There are, however, many examples to the contrary, like the court case where two black police members were found guilty of racism towards a female colonel and government policy, which shows that racism against white people and minorities is a reality.

Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and Affirmative Action (AA) are the embodiment of institutional racism.

The possibility that 500 white employees will be laid off in terms of Eskom’s employment equity plan demonstrates this.

The President also said that racism has no place in South Africa. And the FF Plus agrees.

It is not possible to create a sense of unity in the country amid racism, or double standards with regard to it. The FF Plus is, therefore, calling on government to put the racial card aside.

The President must admit that black on white racism does indeed exist.

The crisis surrounding Eskom and the new position for a Minister of Electricity evoke the question of how many people are needed to change a lightbulb.

There is already a Minister who is managing this portfolio.

The fact that the President said the new Minister will in effect only be a project manager raises questions about the inferiority with which the Minister in this position will be regarded.

With regard to the President’s call to all South Africans to take responsibility for the Eskom crisis together, the FF Plus wants to make it abundantly clear that it is not willing to take any responsibility for it.

The crisis is the ANC’s own making and by persisting with the very things that caused the crisis, like BEE, government is demonstrating that it is not really willing to solve the problem.

The FF Plus compiled a Ten-point Plan that offers solutions, but whether the President will even read it if it were submitted to him remains an open question.

In 2015, President Ramaphosa, deputy president at the time, was appointed as the head of the so-called Eskom War Room to address the power problem. Nothing came of it.

In the years after that, ANC ministers kept promising that the power crisis will soon be over. But it only got worse.

Government is clearly not able to solve the problem, and is completely out of touch with ordinary citizens’ opinions about the matter.

A survey conducted by the FF Plus about how the public experiences problems with power shortages clearly shows how critical the situation is.

Ordinary businesses must shell out millions of rand a year just to survive.

Like with the power crisis, crime is also out of control and it does not seem like government has any solutions or plans to combat it.

Re-instating a unit like the Scorpions would be a good starting point for resuming the fight against crime.

Another problem is the country’s proposed Expropriation Act, which has the sole objective of making expropriations without compensation possible.

The FF Plus is calling on the President to first refer it to the Constitutional Court before finally signing off on it.

Ultimately, all the problems in South Africa make it very clear that there will be no solution as long as the ANC is in power.

Those who cause the problem cannot be part of the solution as well.

The only solution is to get rid of the ANC as government in 2024.

And then we can start to re-build the country.

Read the original article in Afrikaans by Dr Pieter Groenewald on FF Plus

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