ANC appoints tried and tested

The fallacy of spin is that one puts in a little truth here, doctors it a bit there, adds in a bit of untruths to spice it up and you start to believe your own half-baked truth of a story.

Kameel Premhid, in his piece, falls squarely into this trap. No doubt, his political masters have taught him well.

Firstly, he fumbles. One usually does this when untruths are involved. What does the first sentence: "Given the sheer size of the ANC in Parliament, and the impact of proportional representation on MPs, the ruling party's anointment [sic] of its committee chairs and whips normally draws little attention." even mean?

OK. He could have mixed up his conjunctions (hard to believe for an Oxford MPhil candidate in IR  besides I've never heard of this breed before MPhil 'candidates' you only find PhD 'candidates' and that's in an advanced stage of your studies. Even if you are doing your MPhil, which is normally done by thesis only. But OK a topic for another discussion).

Maybe his sentence should have read: "Given the sheer size of the ANC in Parliament [BECAUSE] of the impact of proportional representation on MPs, the ruling party's [APPOINTMENT] (though he might have been sheepishly sarcastic in using the word "anointment") of its committee chairs and whips normally draws little attention." Well did it? It got the attention of a MPhil 'candidate' in IR nogal all the way up in Oxford.

But alas, Premhid's issue is not proportional representation, I would hope. The DA would score far less seats in any house based on the constituency representation system. One assumes too that he does not take issue with the ANC beating other political parties fair and square at the polls unless of course this Oxford MPhil 'candidate' also regards voters as clowns or dogs. Not nearly impossible, I would imagine.

But this is how the proportional system works: the one with the "sheer size" of the vote gets the "sheer size" of the number of parliamentary seats. No?

What are his issues though? He, firstly, takes issue with the fact "...that the committee chairs and whips feature many 'big beasts' of parliamentary politics, both past and present..." Let's forgive him for the unfortunate usage of the word "beasts" (maybe down there with clowns and dogs?).

This Oxford MPhil in IR 'candidate' would maybe understand that in any political system the more senior members of the party would take precedence over the more junior ones. Ah, not so in the DA! A foreign concept, for sure, for them. People are parachuted left, right and centre. From Mazi-tea-girl-buko to Obama-cum-Maimane, from Fernandez to MacKenzie. Their defense? Wit, sorry fit, for purpose.

And then remember Mamphele Ramphele? Lets come back later to this 'fit for purpose' thing-a-ma-jig.

As a side swipe, President Zuma's cabinet is described as "bloated". What can we expect from this true to form liberal? "Small state is the answer, you idiot!" Premhid and his ilk would argue. Never mind that post-2008 economic crisis the biggest creator of jobs in every country has been the state, Premhid and his liberal friends (if he even knows his company) will advocate smaller state.

But let's learn something from the tried and tested former Justice Minister, Dullah Omar, (Premhid have you ever heard of this man?) when his thinking was: "...as we went about right-sizing (sic) government, to avoid creating a bloated and expensive public administration, we should take care not to fall into the dangerous trap of weakening and therefore disempowering the democratic state..." Here, I'm quoting President Thabo Mbeki. Your Mbekite colleague, Maimane, should be able to give you a few hints on how to learn from this tried and tested ANC cadre.

When the apartheid state was designed to function for the well-being of about only 10% of the population it made sense that a leaner cabinet should suffice. Yet there is hardly any evidence suggesting that Botha, De Klerk or even Vorster's cabinets were a 10th of what the present cabinet is. For sure, their cabinets were bloated. De Klerk, for one, was Minister of Bantu Education. What kind of work could he possibly have done besides lay the foundations to the mess that our education system is in today?

The "bloated cabinet" myth has been coming on since the cabinet was announced. Yet no normative nor descriptive arguments have been presented supporting the notion that the cabinet is "bloated". Again, it is one of those spin fallacies that is used by neo-liberals in the country with which to beat President Zuma. Not beat the ANC, not beat the lackadaisical private sector, beat President Zuma.

Has this personalising of our politics anything to do with Premhid's insistence on referring to President Zuma, simply as "Zuma"? He is after all only the primary protector of the Constitution and the first citizen of our country.

Premhid then takes issue with Gwede Mantashe making the announcement iro the naming of the committee chairs and chief whips. He does not understand firstly, the proportional system because then he would know that parties deploy and hence it is only appropriate that party officials name. Secondly, he misconstrues separation of party and state because it would seem he has never asked why President Zuma and not Gwede Mantashe names the executive. Thirdly, he should do himself a favour by reading up on what 'democratic centralism' is and means.

Let's not even venture into his third reason. For like his spin, he wishes to suggest to the reader that he might be onto something when in actual fact he has nothing. Something like mental masturbation.

So what if Cyril Ramaphosa and Gwede Mantashe stand for the presidency in 2017? Surprise, surprise the ANC is a democratic organisation! Anyone, if they qualify, could stand. Even, ugogo Xoliswa. Difference between the ANC and other parties: one has to be a tried and tested cadre.

Does tried and tested exist in the DA? Look in the direction of the Western Cape, Premhid. The DA, not the ANC, controls the Legislature there, you may know. The DA controls the Executive too.

Speaker Fernandez was hand-picked, that's right, hand-picked, or anointed (your word) by the Premier. The ANC caucus elects its Speaker candidate. So the DA Speaker, entrusted with holding the DA Premier and her executive accountable and giving oversight, is selected by the DA Premier herself. The Speaker has no legislative experience, no political office experience and hardly any political experience either, only joining the DA less than 3 years ago. So much for 'fit for purpose'.

All of the committee chairs are chaired by DA people, except for SCOPA, which is chaired by the sole ACDP opposition representative. Christians himself is a political prosecute having jumped from the Nats, to the ID, now with the ACDP. Then again the Christians do forgive. Maybe his next stop is the DA?

More importantly, the DA's appointees, or premier anointees more like it, are nowhere near being "big beasts". Take one Ricardo MacKenzie, promised more than what he got, had to settle for being the chair of the sports and recreation standing committee.

Or Basil Kivedo, long a political hopper and who had to make way for a white mayor in Breede Valley, being awarded the chair of the education standing committee. Go google him, he has an interesting history but not in the DA.

The fundamental difference with the ANC 'big beasts', as Premhid calls them, is that they are tried and tested. Not parachuted, not a name the IT system spits out to say who the best candidate is based on an online test. No, tried and tested!

Premhid's article tells us nothing about the ANC's parliamentary appointments. What the appointments though do tell us is that the ANC goes for tried and tested cadres. Not tokens, not parachuted leaders nor leaders paid through patronage. Tried and tested cadres.

Who sets the agenda?

I’m back. 

This blog was never intended to attract thousands of followers nor to “raise my profile”. Rather it was my way of keeping track of my own thoughts and then making it possible for others to peep into my head. For example, the other day, I read the blog I wrote about our own Iron Lady and how spot on that blog was and still is.

I must confess though that I was surprised by the amount of people who have told me, since getting back from Belgium, that they read this blog. Writing this blog, or a specific blog entry, the analysis on ward 88, landed me my current job in the ANC.

This brings me to the sensitive issue about writing publically. For weeks now, I have struggled between getting into this habit of blogging again and on the other hand being wary or making sure I do not divulge matters that should be ideally discussed inside in the organisation. 

The ANC, of which I am voluntarily a member and now employee, has guidelines about discussing internal party matters externally. There is also a fine line between me sharing my ideas publically and those ideas which should rightfully be kept in the private domain of the organisation. 

However, we must engage in the battle of ideas. Sometimes as disciplined cadres we tend to shy away from publically engaging on issues that affect the lives of our people or we fail to rise to the occasion of setting the national, and in this case specifically provincial, agenda. 

This blog, as before, will try to give an informed view but it must be emphasised that it will be a personal view. I write in my private capacity simply to encourage debate both within and outside our structures.

If we are silent then we allow those few among us to continue their attempt in setting our national and provincial agenda. During these past elections, for example, we have seen these national and provincial elections reduced to a referendum on Nkandla. Opposition parties and the governing party in the Western Cape could not explicitly indicate to South Africans what their policies or programmes were to address the issues faced by our people. They campaigned on Nkandla.

What the ANC tried to do, especially in the Western Cape, was to set the agenda by highlighting the real issues affecting our people. We took up campaigns with regards to jobs, skills, education, early childhood development, crime, gangsterism, drugs, sanitation, housing, land and the plight of farm-workers.

And yet the ANC in the Western Cape now has to ask itself some difficult questions. In complete absence to a DA provincial government’s response to these issues, the people of the province still voted DA. Was the ANC off course with these issues? Did voters expect something else than the championing of these issues? Is all they ever wanted a condemnation or vote against Nkandla?

Who sets the provincial agenda?

Let’s engage.