Cape Town - Listening to ANC MPs defending and voting to shield a wounded president who is trying by all means to avoid accountability, you get a sense this is a scenario South Africans are all too familiar with.
Readers with keen interest in the Nkandla scandal and how then-National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete used every trick in the book to protect erstwhile president Jacob Zuma from being held accountable, will have an idea of where this is bound to end.
What we do know is that it’s not going to be a happy ending, either for the country or President Cyril Ramaphosa.
But judging by the chorus of no’s by ANC MPs in shooting down the adoption of the Section 89 panel report, which found Ramaphosa has a case to answer over the farmgate scandal, it’s clear that the more things change in the ailing ANC, the more they stay the same.
What Tuesday’s vote does not change is the fact that Ramaphosa has failed to take the country into his confidence and detail what happened at Phala Phala.
Until he does so, he remains a president with a cloud hanging over him, who is being assisted by his party to escape being held accountable. Quite ironic for a president who wants us to believe he is nothing like Zuma and that his integrity is intact.
It was not unexpected that ANC MPs would use their majority to shoot down the report, but what it demonstrates is that the ANC has no interest in having Ramaphosa tell the nation his side of the story. To them, the party comes first.
Thankfully, there are those like Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Mosebenzi Zwane and Supra Mahumapelo who have demonstrated that they can openly differ with their party. That’s how a functional democracy works.
Whatever their motives, they deserve a special mention.
For those MPs who rejected the adoption of the report, they once again showed South Africans that perhaps the ANC is long past its sell-by date.
Our very own Nkosikhulule Nyembezi aptly sums it: “If victory in blocking the impeachment process means that the ANC is winnowed down to a shape acceptable to the rapacious interests it intends to challenge, that victory is questionable.
Is it a victory at all, or a climb on to a winner’s podium built on a staircase of defeats?”
A new dawn? What a farce!
Cape Times