The bright side of ANC’s incompetence

There is a silver lining to the ANC government’s incompetence and corruption.

That might not seem logical, given they have the opposite of the Midas touch because just about everything they come into contact with turns to shit. Deep breath.

The Post Office, SAA, Eskom, Denel, Prasa, Transnet, the Land Bank, SABC, National Lotteries Commission, National Student Financial Aid Scheme, Public Investment Corporation, Road Accident Fund.

Those are the state-owned enterprises.

We still have departments that are a disaster: police, home affairs, health, education, water affairs, transport, social services…Is there just one sector of South African society which has done well under the ANC?

I’ll listen on the radio…Yet, all South Africans should be thankful the party is unable to organise the proverbial bonk in a whorehouse (at least without stealing from madam, client and prostitute).

Because, if they did, we might well end up like Zimbabwe…

Take a look at how thoroughly and efficiently the Zimbabwean government has applied state terror since independence in 1980.

You cannot blame the Zimbabwean population for not rising up: President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s security apparatus (much of which he put in place under Robert Mugabe) is far more efficient than ours will ever be.

Can you imagine South African cops tearing themselves away from water-bombing restaurant owners and grabbing booze and smokes, long enough to arrest plotters (real or imagined) against the ANC?

This week, Mnangagwa showed that the Monday 27 July 2020 Crocodile (his nickname from his days as a guerrilla leader) never changes its scales.

His cops arrested journalist Hopewell Chin’ono.

Chin’ono was accused of “plotting with foreign powers” to “violently overthrow the government”.

That is apparently what he was really intending when using his social media accounts to encourage people to join nationwide protests set for this coming Friday.

And, to those who might be tempted to say that this “wouldn’t happen if he were white”, let me disabuse you.

In 1982, operatives from Mnangagwa’s Central Intelligence Organisation arrested two former colleagues of mine at The Herald newspaper in Harare, news editor Bill Hipson and assistant editor Aubrey McDowell.

The two Scotsmen were accused with exactly the same words used on Chin’ono.

They were kept in detention for some weeks, physically and mentally abused, before being deported. I knew both men.

They were not plotters – they had contempt for most organised government doings. They were just journalists doing their jobs.

In late 1983, the then director of information in Harare, Justin Nyoka, labelled me an “enemy of the state” because of my reports on the Gukhurahundi genocide in the southern province of Matabeleland.

He initially wanted to deport me but, because I was born in Harare, that would have required a special act of parliament.

As an enemy of the state, I could have had all my assets seized (which were, at that stage, a 15-year-old Datsun sports car and a Yamaha trail bike).

For my own safety, though, I was pulled out of Matabeleland reporting. Long may the ANC’s incompetence keep it from implementing that sort of dictatorship…

Brendan Seery.

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