POLITICS

Book relating the success stories of the ANC is empty – Anton Alberts

FF Plus says nothing the opposition says will be taken seriously by ruling party

The book relating the success stories of the ANC is empty

8 June 2017

If a book were to be written on the achievements of the ANC since it came into power, the book would be completely empty, says adv. Anton Alberts, FF Plus parliamentary spokesperson for finance.

Today, with the First Reading debate on the Appropriations Bill, adv. Alberts said that the minister, Malusi Gigaba, is about to jump off the fiscal cliff without a parachute or a lifeline and he is going to take the entire country with him.

“Clearly, there is not much that one can add to this empty book on the ANC’s achievements. Whatever the opposition says will not be taken seriously anyway. We can make valuable contributions regarding economic development, fiscal policy and job creation for the poor in our country. But we’ve realised that we are simply wasting our breath.

“This brings me to another book that I had discovered a few years ago. I had actually forgotten about it until the wonderful explanations offered by our honourable president reminded me of it. He explained that, apparently, the dismissal of ministers Nene and Gordhan had no effect on the market and that, in effect, the ANC played no role in getting our economy to its current state. That is what the Gupta spin doctor, Bell Pottinger, says and who can argue with that?

“This second book makes it clear that not even the ugly truth of South Africa’s economic situation will deter the president and his followers from the road of plundering and pleasure that they have embarked on at South Africa’s expense.

“What the ANC and the president is doing at present reminds one of the popular book On Bullshit by professor Harry Frankfurt of Princeton University in which he argues that people who do not have the slightest regard for the truth are much worse than liars, who at least realise that what they are doing is contradictory to the truth.

“They will keep believing that the whites control the economy even though the facts prove otherwise, they will keep arguing that the dismissal of a competent minister of finance did not damage the economy, that being downgraded to junk status was not a direct consequence thereof and that all the negative outcomes can easily be fixed by means of radical economic transformation.

“The tragedy of it all is that even those in the inner circle of the ANC think that they are too clever to have to pay attention to the warning signs. For that reason, the empty book and professor Frankfurt’s thesis seem like appropriate analogies for our government. That is also why they are doomed to end up the same way every other government that thought that it would rule forever, ended up.

“They will need to take this warning to heart, because in a little while it will be too late and everybody will realise that president Jacob Zuma was simply writing the epitaph of the ANC,” says adv. Alberts.

Issued by Anton Alberts, FF Plus chairperson and parliamentary spokesperson: Finance, 8 June 2017