Once again ANC members have resorted to hooliganism and violence to resolve their differences.
Once again ANC members have resorted to hooliganism and violence to resolve their differences.
This time members in Limpopo traded punches at a branch meeting this weekend as they debated nominating new leaders.
The ruling party might deny it, but a pattern is developing here.
Members of the camps that the ANC says do not exist in its ranks battle to ensure their side wins the spoils of power, right from the smallest branch to national formations.
Discussion turns ugly, tempers flare and some bright spark resorts to such profound intellectual reasoning as jeering the other side, dropping his trousers or drawing a knife.
The party's leaders can castigate the perpetrators to Kingdom Come, deny the divisions all they want and call for as much political education as they please. But it is clear to any outsider that the ANC risks losing control of itself if it does not remove bad apples immediately.
Remember that the delegates at these meetings are the party's chosen representatives.
So if the creme de la creme of this once-proud organisation cannot debate and govern themselves in a civilised fashion, how can we the people of South Africa trust them to lead us into our troubled brave new future?
Violence in ANC ranks
Once again ANC members have resorted to hooliganism and violence to resolve their differences.
Once again ANC members have resorted to hooliganism and violence to resolve their differences.
This time members in Limpopo traded punches at a branch meeting this weekend as they debated nominating new leaders.
The ruling party might deny it, but a pattern is developing here.
Members of the camps that the ANC says do not exist in its ranks battle to ensure their side wins the spoils of power, right from the smallest branch to national formations.
Discussion turns ugly, tempers flare and some bright spark resorts to such profound intellectual reasoning as jeering the other side, dropping his trousers or drawing a knife.
The party's leaders can castigate the perpetrators to Kingdom Come, deny the divisions all they want and call for as much political education as they please. But it is clear to any outsider that the ANC risks losing control of itself if it does not remove bad apples immediately.
Remember that the delegates at these meetings are the party's chosen representatives.
So if the creme de la creme of this once-proud organisation cannot debate and govern themselves in a civilised fashion, how can we the people of South Africa trust them to lead us into our troubled brave new future?