The African National Congress (ANC)’s flagship annual new year agenda-setting event, the January 8th Statement, has lost value. That is according to Political Analyst, Lesiba Teffo, who has lambasted the ANC having allowed itself to be in the position it finds itself in with a few before elections.
Speaking to SABC News on Saturday, as the ANC hold its 112th anniversary January 8th Statement celebrations in Mbombela, Mpumalanga, Teffo, says even some of the party’s bigwigs no longer take the event seriously.
“It is almost a ritual … it a ritual of no consequence. I am saying this because I have attended many of those in different capacities and I have to realise that this has lost value, because even diehards members seldom attend. Even members of the Executive Committee. If today you were to go to some of the malls, you’d find some of the Cabinet members,” says Teffo.
January 8th Statement has lost value: Professor Lesiba Teffo
Teffo says something went wrong within the government party, highlighting porous border, cadre deployment, among others, as some of the issues that the ANC allowed to diminish they support they used to enjoy.
“When in yesteryears some of us told them that the day would come when you would want to do what is right, and it would be too late and by then people would have voted with their feet, they never took us seriously. They are lecturing us today on the ills that beset their party,” says Teffo.
“But you if ask me further, I would say they know that in 2002 had they listened and taken the advice of Dr Van Zyl Slabbert that they should amend the electoral act, which some of us said was unconstitutional, they dared not listen until the Constitutional Court pronounced otherwise. They know that had they dealt with the porous border, if they had addressed the question of migration, perhaps they would still have a respectable number. Had they dealt with the issue of cadre deployment and appointed people on merit … had they allowed meritocracy to triumph kleptocracy, they know for sure, people would still be following them,” he adds.
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