It’s worth pondering how unpaid African National Congress (ANC) employees feel about the organisation allocating resources to massive billboards decrying Israel. ANC policy aside, it must be frustrating to see both the effort and cost that the organisation has invested while unable to pay its staff. Grand gestures are all good and well, but it can’t taste good on an empty stomach.
Over the weekend, the ANC resorted to a crowdfunding initiative to assist it in the payment of employees who haven’t yet received their salaries. In doing so, it shared a poster on a number of social-media platforms with banking details, asking ordinary members of the public and ANC supporters to make contributions to a Nedbank account.
It went swimmingly, apparently, with one of the organisers saying, “The public response was very positive, the masses have responded positively.” I can confirm that my response was also more positive than anything else. Positively gobsmacked. Positively outraged. Positively tickled. And positively horrified. I was also positive that this couldn’t be real, and that the ANC or someone with a fantastic flair for creative finance was pulling our proverbial leg.
Only, the situation is hardly funny. The ANC, South Africa’s ruling party, is unable to pay its staff. Unable to meet the most basic commitment that it has made to the people it employs. That isn’t a laughing matter. People who have worked have every right to be paid. The fact that it’s unable to do so speaks volumes not only about its lack of responsibility and care, but also about its financial incompetence. It’s also no surprise, given the state of the nation, the state of ANC municipalities, and the economy under its watch.
What seems to drive the ANC is grandstanding and its desire to showcase itself as some sort of moral bastion even though its reputation today is more synonymous with corruption than anything else.
“End Israeli Apartheid” screams the ANC billboard that probably costs a number of salaries per month. There are, as a matter of interest, two ANC anti-billboards. One in Jabulani and one on the East Rand. That the “apartheid” label has unfairly been used is neither here nor there. Nor is it here or there that women in Afghanistan are living in fear of their lives, that Christians are persecuted across the Middle East, or that Iran is hanging gay people. It also matters not at all to the ANC that Muslims are being herded into concentration camps in China, and that its friends, the Cubans, have systematically deprived their people of rights.
What matters to the ANC is popularism and point scoring. Even if it comes at the expense of its own employees, and at the expense of its own people – Jews and Christians alike – who are supportive of Israel.
The fact that the ANC had to turn to crowdfunding to raise money to pay salaries is embarrassing. But more so is the fact that there are those who throw good money after bad, and supported it.
1st published by SAJR.
