Why the ANC shouldn’t win Election 09

When South Africans go to the polls in just under 48 hour’s time, it seems that they will do so to re-elect the ANC.

Whilst political pundits and opposition parties alike wait to see if the ANC are re-elected with the magical working Parliamentary majority of 66.6%, so too should the world.

Since 1994, South Africa’s international reputation has gone from zero to hero in many respects. Yet the fall of apartheid and the diplomatic thaw should not disguise the fact that there is one significant reason why the ANC should not win Wednesday’s election; their loss of the “Mandela morality”.

Many South Africans still live in poverty or live with the vicious disease that is AIDs. Most of these are poor are black people. These are the very people, whose lot, the ANC should have improved in its 15-year reign.

Like all governing parties, the ANC seems to have extinguished the political torch handed to it by millions of South Africans. No party has a monopoly on power and the ANC would do well to remember this.

Even if the election result is a foregone conclusion, the ANC cannot govern in the way it has become used to. Many South Africans may have achieved their political emancipation but now let their socio-economic emancipation begin.