Will the real ANC please stand up

It's official. I'm no longer a supporter or admirer of the ANC. I remember voting excitedly for the ANC in 1996 when I was 18. My excitment came partly from knowing that few of my white friends would be doing the same, and partly from feeling that they were wrong in so (not) doing. The ANC meant change, it meant dignity, it meant a realignment of priorities and principles in all the right ways. My thinking was that the vast parliamentary majority the ANC was sure to capture was in the interests of the country. I felt that my tiny contribution was to add further impetus to the huge boulder already rolling through the landscape of policy and discourse, helping to reshape the world into an altogether better place. In the years since that first vote cast, my views have changed gradually to incorporate the need for a stronger opposition. In my mind I pictured that this would lead to strident debates in various forums, leading to more rigorously formulated policies and the abandonment of untenable views and planned courses of action. But still, the ANC retained my confidence as capable of plotting our course gradually towards the achievement of the myriad noble goals established (and admittedley continuously reviewed) post-1994.

This is no longer the case. Without fail, every time a member of the ANC is quoted in the media nowadays, I feel a deep and sickening repulsion to what I hear. This does not originate from some kind of prejudice. As I've explained, I would, if anything, be prejudiced in favour of the ANC. Those favourable feelings have been rapidly depleted however in response to the facile and vindictive pronouncements that have become ubiquitous and synonymous with the "new ANC". This is not an ANC I can relate to. This is a bunch of nasty characters. The sacking of Mbeki forced me to revisit my uninterrogated views of him as "a good guy" because he "seems like a good intellectual" not prone to the machiavellian machinations I, even as a supposedly progressive "whitey", privately feared. It turns out I was wrong. Mbeki had not an insubstantial amount of Machiavelli inside him, and made the fatal mistake of allowing forment to brew while he pursued his intellectual ambitions of the "African Rennaissance". Still, the way he was sacked put paid to the whole notion of the sanctity of unity within the ANC and towards its principles. This is the whole problem. The astounding level of hypocrisy currently prevailing in all ANC discourse. Mbeki is a respected "comrade" who has served the movement well - then why was he dumped in so undignified a manner? The ANC is a dignified and proud organisation - then why are those quitting the organisation referred to as "dogs", and why, in soundbites from every ANC meeting, can one hear sinister laughter in response to each increasingly churlish remark, inciting the crowd to ever more gleeful affirmations of the speakers twisted rationale. This is scary stuff. Gwede Mantashe employs his particular brand of logic, replete with faux Marxist discourse to rationalise the changes taking place and lend an illusory sense of historical inevitability to events, especially of the historical inevitability of failure of the current break-away faction of displeased ANC members. Mothlanthe was supposed to be the level-headed and even-handed leader, but he has uttered the same thinly veiled threats. Zuma's softly modulated, reasonable sounding reassurances seem hollow when placed next to the overtly violent references of his signature song "Umshini Wam". Need I even mention Malema? These are not the kinds of people I can ever admire, respect, or vote for.

At least people aren't buying it - at least not those one hears guffawing in such an offensive way in ANC meetings. The media has been unrelentingly harsh on the ANC recently, and this is heartening. We may live in a de facto one party state, but it is not a propaganda state.