Durban — It is a rare occasion that an ANC member freely and openly criticises the party, its policies and performance as the governing party of the last nearly three decades.

When one does, it behoves the country to sit up and take notice.

Mavuso Msimang is no ordinary ANC member and no ordinary politician.

With a career in the party spanning about 60 years, he has held various positions, including commander of uMkhonto we Sizwe pre-democracy, and director-general of the Home Affairs Department and deputy president of the ANC Veterans’ League post-democracy.

Msimang has also been a member of the ANC’s hallowed National Executive Committee.

This is the man who this week quit the party, saying that most of the country’s ills could be linked to corruption taking place under the ANC’s governance.

Citing high unemployment rates, the Eskom no-power issue and its effect on the economy, and lately, mismanagement at Transnet which has led to huge backlogs at the country’s ports, Msimang said the country was in a state of crisis, with no semblance of urgency from the ANC to address the issues.

Nor had the ANC heeded the veterans’ call for the party to bar individuals cited for corruption by commissions of inquiry.

This is hardly surprising, with the party’s leader himself at pains to explain the origins and presence of hundreds of thousands of dollars – perhaps millions – at his game farm.

That the ANC delivered freedom, democracy and dignity to the country’s majority is not in dispute.

That the party’s members quickly descended into an orgy of corruption and looting, starting with the infamous arms deal and progressing to the Guptas and Eskom, is also not in dispute.

Msimang laments that children die in pit latrines while the ANC elite flaunt obscene wealth, sending their children to well-resourced private schools.

As a man of conscience, he had reached the point of no-return.

Coming ahead of next year’s crucial elections, the financially bankrupt ANC must sit up and take notice before a total descent into moral bankruptcy.

Independent on Saturday

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