Why should ANC be surprised about BCM crisis?

Our governing party, the ANC, often delivers the most obvious news about the dire state of governance or the economy as though it is some distant concept for which it bears zero responsibility.

After a four-day meeting in Gauteng of its highest decision-making body between conferences, the national executive Committee (NEC), the ANC declared that the state of the country’s economy was “in a state of emergency that requires drastic action”.

The only entity startled by its own obvious conclusion appeared to be the ANC, a party which has governed for three decades.

Has it forgotten that state capture under the governance of its own former party president Jacob Zuma cost the country more than a trillion rand?

And then of course there was the vast public sector corruption which happened during the Covid-19 years.

The individuals who seek to remain in power or those who wish to assume power bicker while BCM burns

Corruption continues to taint big government contracts and state- owned enterprises.

Small wonder then that the economy has tanked despite all the potential this country holds.

This strange habit of declaring these crises as though caused by some alien entity is replicated in the Eastern Cape, where the ANC’s NEC this week declared that Buffalo City metro was on the “brink of dysfunction” due to the ongoing political factionalism within the ruling party.

Once again, there is not a single resident living within the borders of this large metro who was surprised by this discovery which appears to have so startled the NEC.

One cannot but speculate about which clue gave it away to the NEC.

Could it have been the billions of rand wasted on decades of failed public projects, the abysmal service delivery or the obviously decaying infrastructure?

Or could it have been that somebody high up read just one of the many reports carried in the Dispatch chronicling the cost of this factionalism to metro governance.

It is utterly bizarre that members of the governing party within this crisis-laden metro have the time to fight with one another.

Some of the metro’s biggest companies central to the region’s economy and on which the citizens of this metro rely so heavily for employment — such as Mercedes-Benz — face closure thanks to the Trump administration’s decision to impose the hefty 30% trade tariffs.

But the individuals who seek to remain in power or those who wish to assume power bicker while BCM burns.

The great irony is that the victory by the winning faction will be pyrrhic. It will be governing a metro left in ashes.

Perhaps those in charge should stop stating the obvious, take responsibility for their failures and clean up the mess they have created.

Daily Dispatch