by TINTSWALO BALOYI
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – INFIGHTING has returned to haunt Africa’s oldest liberation movement again.
Worsening the woes, this is amid cracks within its biggest coalition partner having re-emerged as it celebrates another anniversary milestone.
The African National Congress (ANC), credited with liberating South Africa but now having lost the trust of the majority, proudly celebrates its founding yearly on January 8 but this year it commemorated it amid shaky ground.
The 113-year-old ANC lost its majority last May during elections and is torn between factions supporting current leader Cyril Ramaphosa and its now-biggest nemesis and expelled leader, Jacob Zuma, as well as its biggest coalition partner, the Democratic Alliance (DA) always making fun of the ANC’s loss of its dominance.
Yet they are partners in administration, known as the government of national unity (GNU).
The ANC is walking a tightrope inside and outside the coalition government.
Zuma, its beleaguered leader between 2007 and 2017, remains a thorn in the flesh and, after his expulsion from the party in 2024, some influential members in ANC are openly supporting him, posing a headache for the ANC in maintaining unity.
These supporters include Tony Yengeni, the former ANC freedom fighter that has been Zuma’s envoy in his demands to remain in the ANC yet he now is president of uMkhonto weSizwe (MK).
Trouble started when Yengeni disparaged plans by the ANC to hold the January 8 celebrations at a ridiculed stadium in the Western Cape, where the DA is a ruling party.
Yengeni suggested ANC had lost its popularity and had thus booked a small stadium.
Yengeni is aged 70 and party secretary general Fikile Mbalula is aged 53.
Mbalula responded angrily.
“He will be charged,” he said.
“He is a political Casanova,” refers to Yengeni.
This is a dilemma as if the ANC is gagging its members or whipping them into line.
The DA, for long until the 2024 elections – the main foe of the ANC, this week trolled the former liberation movement, for hosting its anniversary in the Western Cape.
Cape Town is the regional economic giant and the DA showed there was no love lost.
“While every city and government department that the ANC runs is a picture of ruin and collapse, Cape Town stands as the one city that works,” said Geordin Hill-Lewis, Mayor of Cape Town.
– CAJ News