By Onkgopotse Tabane
Why did the opposition in South Africa fail to make any headway into the support base of the ANC after 1994? It all boils down to history and heritage. The ANC has created a loyalty base based on a certain amount of entitlement to the claim that it has liberated South Africa.
But you need to take a moment to reflect that the ANC did not become a broad church by mistake. It tapped into civil society - many sectors of our society - to be able to lead a revolution that resulted in the liberation of our people in 1994.
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When it came to power it marginalised all of these civil society friends, including the tripartite alliance. They are now rising up to support the birth of the first real political competitor in the new South Africa. Yes, even the SACP and Cosatu are doing their bit to build the Congress of the People (COPE) by intimidating members and making reckless policy pronouncements on behalf of government and the ANC. They are doing their bit to make the ordinary person run scared of an ANC hijacked using a communist agenda.
Very few of the opposition parties that exist today can claim the same liberation mantle. Suddenly for the first time in 15 years a group of people who were part of that struggle, who have similar credentials to the leadership of the ANC, can now contest the ANC on a similar and even better platform.
They cannot be easily dismissed as peacetime heroes or, as one ANC leader patently lied, be accused of having joined the ANC after 1990. The ANC has gone into panic mode for a good reason. If Cope is no threat at all, the ANC must explain why it is abusing the courts to oppose names that have not been registered; why it is blocking registration of domain names all over the place, including attempting to intimidate the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office officials to reveal names of people who are registering various aspects of the Cope identity.
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