Cape Town - Political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki has criticised President Cyril Ramaphosa’s leadership and the ANC’s governance of the country.
In an interview, Mbeki said with the government’s deployment of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), the poor who seem to be retaliating in violent protests, will be silenced.
He said for Ramaphosa to make reference about the state of the population heeds no positive results as poverty and unemployment have always been issues the country has grappled with. He also shared the sentiment that poverty of the population cannot be solved by bringing out the army and telling those who are poor to stop complaining about being poor.
Mbeki further reiterated that the role of government and the president is not to tell citizens about the hard difficulties in South Africa, as they are elected to solve the problems.
“I’m surprised that the president is telling us about the state of the population. This is common knowledge. The question is … he has been president, he has been vice-president under Jacob Zuma … what has he done about it? The ANC has been his party.
“They have been in power for 27 years and they have all this information to keep telling us about the hard difficulties of SA … that’s not what they’re elected to do. They are elected to solve the problem. Taxpayers pay Statistics SA to tell us about the state of the economy. We don’t pay government or politicians to tell us about the state of SA.”
He said the ability to respond to poverty is never a correct response.
“You cannot solve the poverty of the population by bringing out the army and telling people who are poor to stop complaining about being poor. That is not going to solve the problem. Of course it will clear the streets, it will reassure the rich and the middle-class that there is peace in the country.
“That’s what the military does. It reassures the middle-class that they should stop worrying about insecurities and should go back to their swimming pools and luxuries. Does it solve poverty? Of course not. It silences them from expressing their anger about the poverty.”
Mbeki criticised government’s “economic recovery plan” which he believes is unfounded. He said the ANC has been in economic recovery forever.
“When the ANC came into power in 1994 it had a programme called Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and Growth Employment and Redistribution, to name a few.
“With all these programmes unemployment has been going up, poverty has been going up so to tell us now that the ANC has a recovery programme … How many years does it take to have a recovery programme that actually leads you to recover?
“There is no recovery programme that the government is working on. There are business proposals that the business community has put before the ANC government at Nedlac for example and the government has ignored those proposals. They do what is convenient and easy for them to do, and whatever is difficult they don’t do.”
Political Bureau