CAPE TOWN - President Cyril Ramaphosa’s labelling of voters as drunk when they criticised the ANC perhaps sums up the term of the administration – drunk on power.
His comments, while campaigning in Ga-Rankuwa in Pretoria on Friday, are unpresidential and undermine the intelligence of the voters the ANC has failed since it governed the country.
With a smile on his face, Ramaphosa said: “Keep quiet. You are drunk,” before jokingly adding: “When it is this hot and you drink alcohol, it is fermenting inside you and drives you crazy.”
This appears to be a worrying strategy his team is adopting whenever they are asked to answer uncomfortable questions and, more importantly, account for the mess communities everywhere find themselves in under his leadership.
A week before his campaign in Ga-Rankuwa, he nearly lost his cool at Folweni township in Durban when angry ANC supporters mobbed and booed him while he was addressing a campaign rally, before his right-hand man and ANC head of elections, Fikile Mbalula, too accused the protesters of being drunk.
For leaders to fail to appreciate the frustrations of the majority of this country, which are as a result of their empty promises, is disheartening and says a lot about the current crop.
Even if the protesters were drunk, that does not give Ramaphosa, Mbalula or anyone else the right to insult them for raising legitimate concerns about the state of our country.
The fact of the matter is the government has failed to live up to the promises it made to the people and must accept that the electorate has lost hope.
Roads are filled with sewage, people share water with animals, corruption is at an all-time high, unemployment is at levels never experienced before, the inequality gap is widening faster and faster, and the economy is stagnant.
There appears to be no plan to get us out of this dark hole.
Instead, our head of state is quick to publicly insult poor people as drunks.
This kind of entitlement and arrogance is sickening and must be called out.
Thankfully, elections are just two weeks away and the power to bring about change will be in the people’s hands.
Cape Times