A JAUNDICED EYE
For once, the ANC Youth League has it right. Pravin Gordhan should immediately stand down as Minister of Finance.
Well, I think that’s what the ANCYL is demanding. Its public utterances are habitually so incoherent and jargon-ridden that, much like those from the ANC Women’s League that also wants Gordhan gone, it is difficult sometimes to know what exactly it is that they are trying to say.
For instance, a fortnight ago the ANCYL bizarrely described Public Protector Thuli Madonsela as a “popcorn”, who is advancing a US agenda of regime change. It also inexplicably referred to controversial South African Airways chair Dudu Myeni, who consistently rebuts claims that she is one of President Jacob Zuma’s lovers, as Dudu Myeni-Zuma. So are we to understand that they are not lovers, just joined at the hips by a hyphen?
But I digress. The ANCYL wants Gordhan out of the Cabinet in order that the “economy can stabilise”, explaining that overseas investors are being frightened away by “cloud around Gordhan’s head”. The ANCWL, in its own gobbledygook release, says that the National Prosecuting Authority prosecution of Gordhan “clearly indicate that there is no individual subjected to the manipulation of the law and law enforcement agencies to ulterior political motives”.
These scripted responses, seemingly compiled using the ANC’s random word generator, are pretty much the standard position taken by that section of the ANC that has already succumbed to state capture. Their position is that the moment that there was a criminal charge against Gordhan, he was duty bound to resign.