The ANC is becoming a party of moral ambiguity.
In the last week, there have been two questionable decisions from the party’s ranks.
The first one involved last week’s failed vote of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma.
There were high hopes that having it in secret would encourage ANC MPs to vote in favour of the motion, resulting in the removal of Zuma.
While the outcome was disappointing for those of us who believe that Zuma is the single most destructive force behind our nation’s decline, we are bound by our constitution to accept the result.
Besides, all is fair in love and war, right?
Not happy with its win, the ANC has confusingly decided to try and take action against the few of its MPs who voted with the opposition.
And this after the party joined the chorus of calls for MPs to vote according to their conscience. But it seems they only support conscientious voting if it ends up in their favour.
If opposition MPs vote with them, they would be objecting loudly if there were threats of sanction made against those MPs.
They would be accusing opposition leaders of being dictators and of being anti-democratic.
The decision to hunt down the renegade MPs also raises a number of very worrying questions, like how the party plans to identify its disobedient MPs, which in turn forces us to ask exactly how secret the vote was.
If they are indeed able to identify the errant 27, then it will forever tarnish the idea of a secret ballot.
Then there’s the matter of the party openly going against the constitution, which instructs MPs to represent their constituents in Parliament, and not their party.
And yet the ANC insists that its MPs toe the party line, no matter how poisoned that line becomes with time.
Let’s not forget Mduduzi Manana, the Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training, who is out on R5 000 bail for assaulting a woman in a nightclub in Joburg.
DEFENDED: Mduduzi Manana
This weekend, the second of Women’s Month, a government minister defended him in the strangest possible way.
But here’s the thing that makes this a story from the political twilight zone.
Firstly, the minister who defended him is a woman.
Secondly, she is in charge of social development, essentially making her the custodian of government’s gender-based anti-violence programmes.
Thirdly, she is the president of the ANC Women’s League nogal. The same league that often condemns all violence against women is now saying that they will advise government not to discipline Manana, because opposition parties are using it to play politics.
Lastly, as part of her defence of Manana, she cited the fact that there are people in government who have done worse and therefore Manana shouldn’t be singled out.
I wonder if Minister Bathabile Dlamini considered any of these glaring contradictions, before deciding to shoot her mouth off.
Did she consider the fact that her statements come only hours after Women’s Day, when any minister with a camera or a microphone pointed in his or her general direction, fervently denounced violence against women?
How are we supposed to take any of those comments seriously?
What hope do we have in a country that is already so anti-woman and so littered with stories of abuse of women and girls?
What hope is there when the minister with the loudest voice to speak out against such abuses is deciding to protect an abuser, because he is a colleague of hers and she doesn’t want to agree with the opposition.
And then the cherry on top, she admits that she may have kept silent about other MPs or ministers who have done even worse.
Does that mean this sort of violence against women is endemic to the ANC and something the party sweeps under the carpet regularly?
I’m inclined to believe, considering the latest news that Manana had allegedly previously subjected some of his female staff to horrible and sexist treatment.
So the ANC will risk moral decay, rather than side with any opposition view, no matter how valuable that opinion may be.
This is a classic case of refusing to listen to sound advice, because that advice is coming from someone you despise.