Jacob Zuma’s ANC has abandoned Madiba's values and vision

2 August 2016

The Democratic Alliance is on the cusp of achieving something incredible and historic in tomorrow’s election. We know it will be extremely tight, and we know that every vote will count. 

Our message to voters in this crucial final 24 hours is simple: There is only one party in South Africa today that honestly strives to take the country forward, to build the future we all hope for. There is only one party in South Africa today that truly represents the values and vision that Madiba lived out. That party is the Democratic Alliance. 

That is obviously a difficult truth for the ANC to come to terms with. I understand that. But it doesn’t make it any less true. 

The ANC of today has become, in the words of Former President Thabo Mbeki,“an ignoble and corrupt parasite”, that governs only for the interests of the well-connected few, not for the poor and not for the unemployed. As Former President Kgalema Motlanthe said just this weekend, the ANC is without leadership, and is in a race to the bottom that risks leaving nothing to salvage. 

This is not the ANC of Madiba. This is not the ANC I voted for as a young man in 1999. The ANC has fallen a long way since then. It is a different party - unrecognisable, corrupt, and uninterested in ordinary people. It just happens to share the same name as the party it once was. 

It is common in politics for an opponent to blatantly twist your words in order to further their own ends. Sometimes, in doing this, the opponent will overreach and expose themselves. 

The ANC has attempted over the last 24 hours to manipulate a portion of my speech at the DA’s Final “Phetogo” Rally in Dobsonville on Sowetan. For the record, here is the text of what I said, which was publicly released: 

“I voted here [Dobsonville] for the first time in 1999, down at the DSJ Primary School. We knew what we had to do: We had to vote for the man that helped liberate us – the party of Nelson Mandela.

There was no debate. We were ANC, and the ANC was us. And that’s how everyone I knew voted. We did it for Madiba.

Back then, as a young man barely twenty years old, I could not imagine a day when the ANC would abandon its values, abandon its people and abandon me.”

The Ministers and ANC leaders who have tried to make an issue of this are themselves the perfect examples of how far the ANC has drifted from our original democratic project. They are venal, corrupt, and flashy. They don’t care about the unemployed. They care about getting rich at the expense of the poor and the unemployed. 

Tomorrow, 03 August, every South African has the chance to put that right. We have the chance to take South Africa forward again. We call on every voter to ask themselves who truly is the standard bearer of the Madiba vision, and to vote for the DA. 

We are working every day to live out the example Madiba set for us, and to take his mission further. We do not always get it right, but it is what guides us and motivates us every day. And it is only the DA that can truthfully say that. 

Tomorrow we can make history. But it will be close, and we need every single person to come out and vote for change. 

Vote DA! 

Issued by Mabine Seabe, Spokesperson to the DA Leader, 2 August 2016