SA had enough of ANC fat cats

The life and death of David Mabuza, our former deputy president, gives so much insight into the ways and wiles of the organisation which raised him and which he championed – the ANC.

The party long ago moved from being a liberation movement to an organisation in which power was the currency because, through power came access to the levers of government power and, in turn, seemingly unlimited public funds.

Mabuza’s route to power suffered an early setback when he was fired from his position as Mpumalanga education MEC by the then premier, Mathews Phosa, after the province’s matric results were faked in the mid-1990s.

He bounced back by building party membership to where Mpumalanga became the ANC’s second largest province – with a corresponding number of delegates at national congresses.

He used his significant voting bloc to ensure the election and then re-election of Jacob Zuma to the office of party president.

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The fall of “The Cat”

He stabbed Zuma in the back in 2017, throwing his province behind the CR17 campaign of Cyril Ramaphosa, enabling him to become president and make promises of a “new dawn” of clean government.

Clearly, Mabuza – known as “The Cat” because he had seemingly come back from death’s door after allegedly being poisoned – had expected he would one day get the highest office himself.

But when Ramaphosa stayed on for a second term and the succession path was murky, Mabuza bailed from active politics.

His history was accompanied by multiple claims of corruption, gangsterism and manipulation… something, to put it mildly, not unheard of in the ranks of ANC leaders.

Mabuza’s life was a struggle to get to the top by whatever means and to enrich himself and his comrades along the way.

However, more and more people can see this is the way the ANC rolls. And South Africans have had enough.

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