For years the narrative about ANC corruption has grown from a seedling into a forest of allegations. Since the Zondo Commission has proof of corruption, it is essential for the ANC to take drastic action and either send its corrupt comrades to prison or defend the ANC with everything it can muster.
The reasoning is historical and globally devastating if the ANC fails in this battle. The ANC does not entirely understand what exactly is at stake. I am not talking about a few corrupt members or a few billion. I am talking about the characterisation of all black people and Africans that govern everywhere.
For example, for centuries whites have repeatedly told blacks that blacks did not have the skills and ability to govern themselves. Slavery and colonialism are a direct result of this belief of whites.
Blacks across Africa and the Caribbean died for freedom, only to have that freedom undermined by corruption. This corrupt reality glorifies white claims of superiority and is vital to white racism.
The ANC has been in governance for almost 30 years and the endless claims of corruption will be its undoing if it does not prove to the rest of the world that corruption and inability are not inherent in the nature of blacks in general and Africans in particular. The burden of proof lies on the ANC’s shoulders.
Those whites who instigate, support and literally partake in the corruption of Africans and blacks, in general, seem to be their friends, but in truth are their worst enemies. At night these same white corrupters tell their white friends and family how corrupt Africans and blacks are, behind the scenes.
This is why racism continues to regenerate itself in South Africa. Whites witness African corruption and this ratifies the traditional belief that Africans cannot be trusted with governance and money.
The ANC must accept that the fight they have with André de Ruyter, the former CEO of Eskom, has little to do with him as a person or with the ANC as a collective. The fight is a global fight against the historical opinion that blacks in general and Africans explicitly are untrustworthy and corrupt, etc.
Whenever whites across the world desire to enforce racial stereotypes, like black inferiority, they point to the African continent and the Caribbean Islands and say, “Look how these blacks behave, they cannot feed their own people because their black leaders steal from their own black people.”
The war that white racists have waged upon the African and black body, mind and spirit will never stop until Africans and blacks, in general, recognise what they themselves are doing to each other.
* Cape Muslim Congress councillor Yagyah Adams.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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