Image: Wikimedia
Some accuse the ANC government of being racially divisive, but in some rural towns, the party is actually uniting black and white in protest at the appallingly bad way municipalities are being run.
This week in Ventersdorp, we saw white farmers and business people united in anger with black people from the township.
Farmers brought along tyres which were set alight outside the municipal offices as people from all walks of life protested the inequities of the town’s service delivery and, specifically, the electricity supply.
All across the platteland, it is the same old story of substandard service delivery which is caused, says independent analyst Fikile Bili, by the ANC’s “cadre deployment”, which is a polite way of saying “jobs for pals”.
Bili described some of those running municipalities as “dunderheads”.
Many of these people live lives of luxury when compared with the dirt poor residents they are supposed to be serving.
The ANC needs to take note. The people are not stupid. They will be loyal only as long as they are not themselves abandoned and mistreated by their government. They will look for allies across the racial and political spectrum, as they did in Ventersdorp.
And they will send it a message in 2019.