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.