Johannesburg - It is rare these days to read any report on the governing party and not find any reference to corruption. The scourge has become so synonymous with the ANC that Luthuli House might as well apply for a patent to own the C-word.
If this book is not it, then it was just a matter of time before a full PhD study was done on the symbiotic relationship between corruption and the ANC.
It is well-nigh impossible to find a leader of the ANC untouched by the stench of corruption. By some sheer stroke of luck, the author manages to find one such individual inside the party and names him – Tito Mboweni.
Otherwise the rest, as famously described by the former social development minister Bathabile Dlamini, “all have smallanyana skeletons in their cupboards” that they are battling to contain.
Just as politicians are known to have an uncanny relationship with the truth, once best articulated by former Mpumalanga premier Ndaweni Mahlangu, ANC politicians have since upped the ante to add thievery to their arsenal of lies.
Not to take away from the obvious hard slog the author put into this final product of his book, this was always going to be an effortless academic exercise. The script, as the saying goes, almost writes itself.
He did not have to look too far nor too hard to compile the study. “The Enemy Within” is hiding in plain sight.
In other democracies the world over, people go to jail for half the criminal indiscretions leaders of the ANC seem to relish doing, and with total abandon.
A guy in a position of trust and influence says, “I did not join the Struggle to be poor.” And the worst he comes to is a rap over the knuckles. Jail time is not even an option. He gets off scot-free and smiles all the way to the bank.
Funds intended for public use to better the lives of the electorate, never see their way into the realisation of the projects. They are pilfered even way before the sod-turning ceremony. This is the ANC way, the only way we have seen things being done since the advent of democracy.
People in public office grow fat on the 10% they skim off the public purse.
It has not helped that those like Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe have screamed their voices hoarse trying to preach to the broad church to vet the quality of the new cadre the party attracts. Even the newcomers or especially this new cohort of cadres, arrive within the folds of the party already with the mindset that “it is our time to eat”.
With corruption being such an endemic thing – an epidemic – within the ANC and, by extension, everywhere the deployee is found, knowledge of the other’s failings or culpability are the new currency. Cadres trade off what they know about the other comrade to bargain themselves out of a spot of bother.
“I know what you did” is not just a defence mechanism flaunted on Hollywood scripts. It is a shield used by thieving ANC party members against one another.
So, when caught, the first thing that comes to mind is not to clear one’s name, legally. It is to blackmail those among his comrades with their own cupboard full of skeletons. To spill the beans is hard currency inside the ANC.
The worry of a former president is not to clear his name and safeguard his legacy – it is to threaten to spill the beans to “have my day in court”, while doing everything possible to stall that eventuality.
If the threats do not seem to do the job, insults are traded: members take the discourse to the dogs!
Sometimes, one’s enemies are not just dogs; they can be dead snakes or labelled in some other metaphor.
The party sits with the Mother of all headaches. It wants everyone who cares to follow its statements that it is anti-corruption and yet, when its leaders are accused and charged with corruption, they cry foul and claim to be victims of some inexplicable plot.
Remember Tony Yengeni being carried shoulder-high as he entered summer camp – prison for a few months? Remember the owner of the compound known as the Museum of Corruption?
Think of a name, any name of an ANC leader – you will find it in the book. Now try to extricate that name from any link with corruption and see how successful you will be.
If you fail, which is guaranteed, you will then get a sense of how important this book is.
The ANC is not just stained by corruption. Corruption is in the DNA of the ANC. It must be the key module in the syllabus at its political school.
Well done to the author.