As the ANC approaches its watershed Mangaung Conference it is yet time to reflect on the likely outcome of the all important gathering. For months petty and sometimes childish displays of egos within the party has been dominating the news. The country being now part of the global village these events have and continue to be beamed across the world with such influential networks as ALJAZEERA, SKYNEWS and CNN, with the last two even being declared by local conspiracy theorists as having adopted one of the protagonists in this sorry saga, one Julius Malema,
Apparently Mr. Malema has been adopted particularly by CNN because the public broadcaster, caught in the throes of internal crisis and paralysis and doing the bidding of one or the other faction depending on how positive or negatively they are presumed to have favoured one or the other, has been "instructed" not to provide coverage of Malema.
It is argued in this respect by some media houses and so called "political experts and analysts" that CNN, like Malema during the Marikana massacre, saw a vacuum and took it. Whether or not this is the case in itself is a subject of a long and separate thesis which I choose not to pursue at this stage,
The focus of this piece is, however, how our mothers in all the structures of the ANC, more particularly in the Women's League, may have to be confronted with a historic and revolutionary duty to rescue the glorious ANC - and by extension the country - from the slippery slope on the back of what the character in one of the local soap operas, Generations called our "fragile egos" as man. Like going to church my appearance before a television set has been, over the years, patchy but I distinctly remember a sound clip from the soapie character Ntsiki, played then by Pamela Nomvete in which she dutifully chastises man and their fragile egos.
The battle of the leadership of the ANC since the Mbeki era has, at most times, been dominated by fragile egos and that is continuing as the party approaches Mangaung. Week in week out we (ordinary members of the ANC and the country as a whole) have been bombarded with overwhelming "news" of clashes of egos from Julius Malema, COSATU, SACP and the various internal structures of the ANC. At first the Limpopo PEC played a solitary prominent role with a counter side show presented by the local COSATU and SACP. Recently, if media reports are anything to go by, Gauteng has joined the fray as well as other provinces,
In the course of democratic engagements there is nothing absolutely untoward about the engagements save for the sometimes acerbic, below the belt and insulting utterances that certain ANC and former ANC members throw at their nemesis. That said there is no denying that the party is increasing following a slippery and self destructing path that if left unabated will consume and kill the democratic "miracle" that South Africa is. Most saddening of all is that it is a miracle that the selfsame ANC has fought for decades for,