With not much to highlight from his first term of office, ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa is asking South Africans to be proud of the ANC’s achievements of the past 30 years.
Presenting the ANC’s plans for 2024 in Mpumalanga on Saturday, Ramaphosa praised the ANC for putting over 28 million people on social grants.
He said the party has delivered electricity to over 95% of the population and extended water infrastructure to 90% of communities.
But on the ground, communities are battling to access clean drinking water in many ANC municipalities, while an outbreak of cholera has reached the capital of Tshwane and the country’s economic hub of Johannesburg.
The party’s service delivery track record took a knock after its 2007 elective conference which elected Jacob Zuma as party president.
Zuma went on to reign over the so-called nine wasted years, during which the government wasted over R1 trillion, most of it looted by Zuma’s friends and sugar daddies.
Party hacks were appointed to head state companies including SAA, Eskom, Denel, Transnet and others which were later ransacked and looted.
State agencies including the police, the SA Revenue Services and the National Prosecuting Authority were hollowed out with top performers replaced by party loyalists at the top.
Ramaphosa’s first five years in office managed to arrest the slide.
Since winning the ANC elective conference in 2017, Ramaphosa has been defending the State Capture Commission of Inquiry – a massive investigation into billions of rands were looted by and with the help of ANC politicians.
At times, Ramaphosa’s attempt to get rid of ANC leaders implicated in various corruption scandals threatened to undo his political career.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown of 2020 to 2022 collapsed the economy, shedding over two million jobs.
With Ramaphosa in charge, ANC leaders, officials and tenderpreneurs stole billions of rands meant to help the country respond to the pandemic, resulting in thousands of people dying in state hospitals with no access to oxygen and ventilators.
Loadshedding and the general energy crisis in South Africa now cost the economy over R300 billion a year.
Youth unemployment, including young people with college and university degrees, has reached 70%.
Addressing over 50 000 party loyalists attending the party’s 112th birthday celebrations in Mpumalanga, Ramaphosa insisted the ANC government was a caring government.
“The provision, comrades, at a social level of housing to millions of South Africans, is one of the great achievements of our democracy.
“Through the provision of houses, of subsidies and service sites, the government has managed to provide 4.7 million homes to our people.
“I know of no other country, certainly on our continent and other continents as well, that has built houses, 4.7 million and given them to our people mahaaala,” said Ramaphosa.
Pictured above: President Cyril Ramaphosa appeals on SA to trust the ANC once more
Image source: X
