To be brutally honest, I couldn't really care less who leads the ANC. In fact, it's only recently that I took the trouble to Google the name "Mangaung" and discovered that it's not actually on the border of Zimbabwe as I assumed but in the Free State. When the party faithful assemble there at the end of this year to elect the leader who will carry the country forward into the next 4 years of international oblivion I will probably just yawn and console myself with the thought that I've seen it all before.
If the Mayans are right and the world ends on December 21st none of this will matter but I have a nagging doubt about the accuracy of the Mayan calendar and suspect they may have got the date wrong. In which case we will have no choice but to face the prospect of another four years of looting and pillaging either under the same President or under a clone. But what does it really matter because, whoever becomes President, the looting and pillaging seems destined to continue.
If I happened to be a black South African who had voted for a better and fairer South Africa in 1994 I would be hugely pissed off. But I am, as many of my readers have pointed out in the comments section in past weeks, a mere pale faced colonial observer of events with that most beautiful of documents....a British passport.
I can push off whenever it suits me and, better still, I can join the millions of rands that the SA Treasury has allowed me to legally stash offshore over the years. I would appear to be perfectly hedged. Except for the fact that I haven't stashed millions offshore in case I want to gap it because I would much prefer to live here in SA and am even prepared to pay taxes for that privilege. All of which should suggest that I should be very interested in who leads the ANC.
But try as I may I cannot get enthusiastic. Maybe it's advancing years. I'm fed up with the constant infighting within the ANC, bored with the moronic behaviour of its Youth League, with the corruption, with a cabinet that opposes foreign investment (Walmart) and with the astonishing lack of any direction among our politicians.
I could just about put up with the arrogance of a party that believes it will rule until Jesus comes if they could demonstrate some real advances in the past 18 years. They will no doubt brag about houses built, electricity delivered, water provided and, admittedly, there are some encouraging stories but the good is far outweighed by the bad. I've lost count of how many senior officials have been accused of corruption on a massive scale over the years but I can only think of one (Selebi) that has been disgraced and sent to prison.