Tell someone they are incompetent enough and they may just believe it - and then use it against you.
The ANC has strategically used its power to create a dependency based on scarcity. Picture: Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images.
There is a story of a man tasked with guarding a room where food was stored. He had one job: to protect what is inside. But each morning, when the people gathered, they found there was a little less food inside than there had been the night before.
They discovered that the man often got a little hungry, so he would unlock the door and invite a friend or two to join him for a late-night feast. He told himself that the people would probably not notice a little food missing.
When he was caught, he cried, admitting that he was terrible at his job but would do better. The people were disappointed but believed he could change. They tried to teach him to be more vigilant, not to go near the food, and to watch out for thieves. They confiscated his key and even set another watchman with him, but the man always found a way to have a late-night feast – and hardly ever alone.
Several revelations and commissions have found that, like the watchman, many inside and connected to the ANC over the last few decades have been tasked with watching the pot but have instead been skimming the top.
They, too, cry incompetence and plead pity when caught.
They live in the organised chaos that is the Grand Academy of Lagado, described in Gulliver’s Travels, run by rulers who constantly apologise that their projects haven’t worked yet but insist they just need more time, more patience, and, crucially, more public money to make them work.
A description of the pity these rulers exploited, which won them favour and money, was shared by Lemuel Gulliver, who made a “small” donation after being told about “their practice of begging from all who go to see them.”
The ANC not meeting a deadline for MPs to serve on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala impeachment committee, its secretary-general Fikile Mbalula admitting that it has been battling illegal immigration for years with little success, and the minister of electricity having to step in to keep the lights on in Johannesburg are just examples from this week of the incompetence ANC-led governments serve South Africans on a near-daily basis.
Why do they do it?
I assume no one enjoys being the fool, but there is one main reason why the ANC put on their rags, take out their begging bowl, and admit they are not up for the task: to avoid accountability.
The chaos that follows when incompetence leads to collapse means those who should hold them to account are so focused on fixing the urgent problem that they don’t look at the cause. They are like the man who lost his wallet in the dark but went searching for it at the lamp, “because that’s where the light is”.
While everyone is distracted, or believes the watchman is working, the corrupt create opportunities for looting and hold power over people’s heads.
Why would you keep the hungry watchman?
StatsSA’s 2025 General Household Survey was released this week, revealing several interesting trends over the last 23 years.
Among these are that the number of children who attend school for free rose from 0.4% in 2002 to more than 65% in 2025, those fed at school have risen to 78%, and more than half of all households now have at least one person on a social grant.
These are much-needed, constitutional interventions that have helped the most vulnerable in society.
Many will say it is a sign of a government that cares and delivers, but behind it lies the sticky trap of dependency. Programs to give are prioritised over those that empower. Food baskets become more important than job creation. Charity becomes more important than capacitation.
And when the government holds all the power, including the power to take food from your child’s mouth or money from your pocket with little to no notice, scarcity becomes a currency.
Scarcity, the original FOMO, is a fear that drives us to stockpile toilet paper during a pandemic. It is also a fear that the government’s help may stop at any time, or that I may be left behind.
It is why the ongoing protests against immigration, which were such a boiling point this week, were so personal to those who took part.
The fear that someone “undeserving” is getting the services I am not is real, and has grown into an anger spilling over.
The collapse of vital electricity and water infrastructure over the last two decades, and the decay of cities and suburbs, all point to a government that has strategically used its power to create a dependency based on scarcity.
The devastation it has left is loud, and no pleading of incompetence and rejuvenation, or tone-deaf signalling for continental unity, can now silence it.
