Roscoe Palm
If the African National Congress (ANC) enters into a grand coalition with the Democratic Alliance (DA), it would kill the movement, the tripartite alliance, and the National Democratic Revolution.
This is what the DA wants.
They want to sever Cyril Ramaphosa’s centre-right iteration of the ANC from the alliance partners, and they are succeeding.
Historically there has always been room for difference within the ANC.
We have seen these contestations play out politically and in policy, but always within the parameters of the “broad church” of the ANC and the tripartite alliance.
An alliance with the DA would go beyond these. It could be argued that this would be counter-revolutionary.
These counter-revolutionaries are selling out the National Democratic Revolution (NDR), long in the tooth and short on ideas to fix the country that they have played a role in first making.
Calls for an alliance with the DA have come from some surprising quarters - Cheryl Carolus, Siphiwe Nyanda, Mavuso Msimang, Zanele Mbeki, the Oppenheimer’s Brenthurst Foundation advisory board member Kgalema Mothlante.
One wonders what motivates this turn to the right, and whether their analysis includes the destruction of the National Democratic Revolution.
Who are those who willingly line up to genuflect in unseemly haste to kiss Helen Zille’s ring?
If this is what they wanted, they should have joined the DA long ago.
There is the carrot of lucre and wealth and there are many examples of coddled cadres who suck on the teat of capital.
If you don’t like the carrot, how about the stick?
High profile arrests have already been made.
One wonders who else the Sword of Damocles hangs over, and who holds this weapon of coercion over comrades who refuse to fall into line.
Everybody knows about the Jacob Zuma prophecy. The one where he says that the ANC will rule until Jesus comes again.
But there is another prophecy that is lost in the evanescence of the social media feed.
In 2019, Helen Zille was recorded as saying that she would rather make demands of “Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC” than anyone else.
The language she uses is strong and forceful.
It is clear that Zille feels that she holds the whip hand, and the expectation is that Ramaphosa will dance to whatever tune the DA plays.
Zille’s DA was in the throes of purging anything that resembled progressivism from the party.
She and others were building a stable that would only accommodate white thoroughbred liberals at the top table of the DA.
Tertius Simmers and Siviwe Garube are just there for optics.
The real stars of the show are former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg’s lapdog Ryan Coetzee, and Tony Leon.
In the leaked recording Zille said, “I think we need to consolidate the DA around 20 percent of the vote. It’s a bloody strong percentage… We mustn’t try to be populist. Twenty percent is big… and if the ANC falls to, let's say, 40%, I’d rather make TOUGH DEMANDS on Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC, to FORCE reforms out of THEM than go into coalition with anyone else.”
A coalition that Zille forces from Cyril Ramaphosa would be white minority rule as Zille herself points out later in the audio leak.
“We mustn’t try to be a fifty percent party (it is unclear as to whether she says fifty or thirty percent). We’re wanting twenty percent of South Africans, and remember there’s only eight percent of white voters between about fifteen to twenty percent. That gives us a strong consolidated block in coalitions”.
It is telling that Helen Zille does not say “The ANC”.
She says “Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC”.
Twinned with words such as “force” and “make tough demands” it is clear that she believes that she’s in control, and Ramaphosa is a participant, willing or unwilling, in the DA’s agenda.
The Brenthurst tail wagging the ANC dog
Maybe the clues as to why ANC members would so readily sell out, lies in an organisation that has deep ties to the western and Nato interests.
On the 23rd of March this year, in the part of the South African Parliament that wasn’t burned to a crisp, there was a gathering of people who want to blow up the National Democratic Revolution, cleave the tripartite alliance apart, and hold South Africa hostage to US and Nato interests.
Guests of honour was Victor Yushchenko, a president who ascended on the back of a a US-backed colour revolution.
Venezuelan coup leader Leopoldo Lopez was also there.
His organisation Liberty Congress, is backed by the National Endowment for Democracy, an extension of the CIA.
Lopez has lately been involved in training a thousand people in Zambia in how to open and manage crypto wallets to move currency into countries that they wish to have influence over.
The event, called the Platform for African Democrats was co-hosted by the Brenthurst Foundation.
It was a gathering of pro-Western actors, representing present and former government officials, media interests, funders, coup plotters and participants, and US State department officials.
That they would shamelessly be allowed to have such a conference in the seat of our constitutional democracy is beyond a joke.
It is a desecration.
This conference included Branko Brkic, the founding editor of the Daily Maverick, which has now quite clearly dropped its mask to reveal that it is a political project.
While other publications such as News24 were not there, the way that liberal media are shipping a coalition between the ANC and the DA is sickening.
Naspers donated heavily to both the ANC and the DA. Even though I predicted this, I could not imagine that we would see such a brazen capture of our institutions by white minority capital interests so quickly after the election.
Since the election results, Oppenheimer stooges Greg Mills and Ray Hartley have been doing cartwheels, jubilantly wish-casting the realignment of our foreign policy to include support for Ukraine.
The Daily Maverick has been publishing this, but they have been hiding this content.
Branko knows that any association to these US interests dents his already shattered credibility and that of his rag.
The Daily Maverick is dubiously funded, and staffed by, among others, the Chief of the South African Zionist Federation, Rowan Polovin. Polovin, a Herzl award winning Zionist, is the Daily Maverick’s head of technology, a key position for a political project that disguises itself as a media facing tech company.
With recent scandals including the Pegasus spyware and Israeli spying on ICJ staff, the depths to which the Oppenheimer stooges would go knows no bounds.
Dirty tricks, spying and monitoring is the standard operating procedure for those who have created a parallel intelligence network in the shadows of the capital interests.
All the talk has been about hostages being held by Hamas.
Are there NEC members that are being held captive to this agenda inside Luthuli House?
For these embedded US and Nato interests, this was never about the markets, the Rand, the constitution, or stability.
This is about smashing the fundamental consensus that binds our fragile South African body politic together.
Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC is not thinking this through.
Our orientation as a social democracy that aspires to the realisation of the National Democratic Revolution is at stake.
Those in the counter-revolutionary cabal should be dealt with.
Joe Slovo, Harry Gwala, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Winnie Mandela, Ahmed Kathrada, Albert Luthuli, Dulcie September, Dullah Omar and other giants of the revolution would brook no such bullshit.
These people calling for an alliance with the DA should have their membership cards revoked in exchange for a blue t-shirt.
They are part of a counter-revolutionary cabal.
The interests that they serve must now recall them and they must be redeployed to serve the US and Nato interests that they feel so comfortable aligning with.
*** Roscoe Palm is an investigative journalist and a political commentator.
** The views reflected here do not necessarily represent Indpendent Media or IOL
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