The ANC thought they were on to a good thing when they started accusing the DA of arrogance. As it became harder and harder for them to succeed with substantive arguments against DA policies which have a record of success in South Africa and elsewhere fin the world, it became easier to attack on matters of style.
One could argue that the pattern of South African democratic politics has been for the ANC to propose some change to the law, for the DA to oppose it and point out the possible adverse consequences. The ANC then accuses the DA of defending apartheid or white privilege or capitalism and pass the law anyway. Then the consequences of which the DA warned come to pass. Those DA people, they’re so arrogant about being right all the time.
That was a claim repeated in scale by a media still staffed largely by people, who if they no longer love the ANC as much as they used to are consistent in their hatred of the DA (they can’t read the room, they get the tone so wrong, and they really are just a white party). It may be a useful primer for the digitally threatened wretches to consider what arrogance really looks like.
The Randburg Sports Precinct is a jewel of an asset for Johannesburg. Sadly, like all other Johannesburg assets it is neglected, starved of funds, run-down and shrouded in controversy suggestive of something not being quite right with the way the money is handled.
Nevertheless, it provides a place where 22 sporting codes get to practice their sports. It is a place where sports people, from professional to school children have a place to play their sports during the week, but especially on weekends. Not this weekend though. On Wednesday came an instruction from the Johannesburg Metro council that there were to be no sports events on Saturday 17 May and access by the sports bodies to the precinct was forbidden because of a ceremony to mark the return to South Africa for re-burial of an ANC official who died in exile 47 years ago.
Diktat
The ANC-led administration in Johannesburg had agreed to a diktat from the provincial administration of Panyaza Lesufi, without any sign of dissent to the project, that will see the remains of 17 people involved in the struggle being returned to South Africa for re-interment.
Leave aside the fact that these people were never elected officials in South Africa and were heroes to the ANC and possibly to the PAC only, it rather takes the breath away for orders to go out from on high, three days before a sporting weekend that all activities are now off, just like that, for what is essentially a political rally at public expense.
A rough count reveals around four thousand athletes who had scheduled sports contacts with fixtures and schedules and spectators and officials will now have to find something else to do. Parents, schoolchildren, youth and professionals, most of them Johannesburg residents, will have their facility usurped in another of the many events the ANC has scheduled to try and shore up political support as an increasing number of South Africans recognise they have shed their right to govern based on policy failure and a lack of personal probity.
There’s always an upside. Because the weekend ceremony is due to be attended by President Cyril Ramaphosa, an army of municipal workers descended on the sports complex, fixing potholes, air conditioning and cutting grass in an operation the like of which has not been seen for ten years. Residents who actually pay rates and taxes get shafted because it’s the President who is coming and cannot be allowed to see the reality of what Johannesburg residents see every day.
Ruling party
I may be wrong, but I don’t think this is only about the usual putting of the needs of the ruling party and its elite before the needs of any citizen. Any glance at anywhere in South Africa reinforces that reality.
I think it is also a subtle show of force to those in an area where most of the people vote for the opposition that one party is in charge and can and will do what it likes when it likes.
That seems to me to be a rather better demonstration of arrogance.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/governmentza/52833631077/]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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