ANC has created arrogant monsters

Kgoerano Kekana, a presenter on Alex FM and ANC Alexandra zone spokesperson, fired a post on Facebook bragging she was able to jump the queue and have her younger sister placed in a school because she is “connected”. Picture: Facebook

Kgoerano Kekana, a presenter on Alex FM and ANC Alexandra zone spokesperson, fired a post on Facebook bragging she was able to jump the queue and have her younger sister placed in a school because she is “connected”. Picture: Facebook

Published Jan 22, 2017

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Kgoerano Kekana is only one of the many men and women with entitlement issues, writes Malaika wa Azania.

For thousands of parents in Gauteng province, the past two weeks have been a nightmare as they desperately tried to get their children placed in schools. The MEC for Education, Panyaza Lesufi, has assured parents that their children will be placed – though in some cases it may take more than a month.

In an interview on eNCA, Lesufi admitted that some students were likely to be placed at the beginning of March – two months after the opening of public schools.

By last week, the department had managed to place over 20000 of the more than 45000 outstanding student applicants to primary and high schools.

In the middle of this crisis that has seen parents take to the media in tears and children languish on the streets, uncertain of their academic futures, the arrogance of association with power reared its ugly head.

Over the last few days, news channels have been running the story of Kgoerano Kekana, a presenter on Alex FM and ANC Alexandra zone spokesperson. Kekaka fired a post on Facebook bragging she was able to jump the queue and have her younger sister placed in a school because she is “connected” to government officials. She named the two Department of Education district officials who helped her, thanking them.

Most people who responded to her post admonished her for naming the officials. The uproar was directed mainly at Kekana, but the reality is that her actions are the tip of the iceberg.

The real issue is that the ANC has created many Kekanas – men and women with entitlement issues who are beneficiaries of a governing party characterised by politics of clientelism. ANC rule has normalised unethical and corrupt behaviour in the public sector.

Kekana, like many ANC members and leaders in particular, believes association with the governing party entitles her to privileges and gives her the right to be prioritised over the thousands of parents waiting in the queue in frustration and helplessness.

This belief is undeniably rooted in her experiences with an ANC that rewards people based on their proximity to power; that treats corrupt and unethical deployees with impunity.

Politics of clientelism are rife in the ANC. They are expressed in various ways. President Zuma’s administration epitomises such politics, where individuals are rewarded for their support of a particular leader. All those who openly supported him in the run-up to the Polokwane conference in 2007 were rewarded in his administration, either through deployment or by other means.

In the same way as he served as their client when they worked hard to put him in office, on entry into that office they became his clientele. His primary task was to cater to them and ensure their satisfaction.

In an environment like this, political survivalism becomes the dominant philosophy. It guides and determines the actions and decisions of political actors precisely because survival depends on associating with the dominant faction and its leader.

The association has to be constantly affirmed – in private and in public. In public, you find these political actors being at the forefront of defending the leader at all cost.

Those who dare challenge the leader, even legitimately, are treated with contempt and severely punished for their transgressions. Often, the punishment is both personal and political.

They are reminded all the time that “it is cold outside the ANC”.

Some comrades have been forced out of employment in government, literally having food taken out of their families’ mouths. Some have been marginalised to a point of despondency and complete detachment from active politics. They have been put in a situation where all they can do is watch as the cancerous sore of survivalism, corruption and mediocrity festers.

Politics of clientelism also extend to government officials treating ANC leaders with open bias. The only thing that set Kekana apart from the tens of thousands of parents who are still waiting in line for their children to be placed is the fact that she is a known leader of the organisation. That fact alone gave her access to the connections that she bragged about having on Facebook.

It put her younger sister in a classroom, while other children can only hope and pray that by the time they are placed in schools, they will not have missed out on a lot of work to a point of never being able to catch up.

Contrary to the argument of Ekurhuleni executive mayor Mzwandile Masina, that the people of Johannesburg are sell-outs for giving the DA the majority vote in the recent local government elections, it is actions like this by ANC leaders and government officials that have made voters lose faith in the ANC.

In 2019 when a mother who waited until March to get her child placed in a school stands in front of a voting booth to cast her vote, she will not see images of Umkhonto weSizwe training in Angola in preparation for armed struggle.

She will remember that while her child was at home wasting away, Kekana’s younger sister was in class learning, after connections enabled her to jump the queue.

The audacity of Kekana to mention her and the district officials’ immoral act on social media might have shocked me somewhat, but no honest person can claim to be shocked by the reality that public service has become a convergence point of some of the most immoral, unethical and corrupt leadership.

Local government in particular epitomises everything that is wrong with the ANC government.

We cannot claim to be shocked by the depth of arrogance that ANC leaders display.

It is this arrogance, this “asinavalo” mentality, which is going to be the final nail in the coffin of an organisation that has morphed into something terrifying and very very dangerous.

* Wa Azania is the author of Memoirs of a Born Free: Reflections on the Rainbow Nation.

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

The Sunday Independent

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