If ANC can’t meet IEC deadline, how will it meet voter expectations?

Another day, another example of ANC incompetence… but, fortunately this time around, they, and not innocent taxpayers, will be the victims.

Not getting your full election candidate lists to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) on time, even though you have known of the deadline for months, speaks volumes about your party.

On the surface, it does appear that there is a level of incompetence within ANC ranks which implies you would be a blithering idiot to trust any of its cadres to run your town or city.

Given the fact that, when it comes to municipal management, the ANC apparatchiks in positions of power have made an art form of kicking the can down the road, one can see how the looming deadline didn’t seem to worry anyone.

While that may be part of the reason, an equally plausible one is that hundreds of its candidate applications failed to make the cut because the party was squabbling within its own ranks on various issues.

When it comes to access to the feeding trough, which is the payback for getting a job as a local government councillor, things can turn deadly, as the growing list of potential ANC candidates who have been assassinated confirms.

But, in all this, we commend the IEC for its no-nonsense approach, confirming that a deadline means exactly that: if you’re not over it on time, you’re dead.

This is not the sort of look a political party would like to have on the eve of an election, when it seeks to convince an increasingly jaded and cynical electorate that the slow-motion ongoing catastrophe engulfing the country is, somehow, an act of nature.

The essence of its plea is: give us one more chance and we’ll sort out the country’s challenges.

You can’t meet deadlines. How are you going to meet our expectations?