Don’t tell me how to live, especially if you’re an uncouth slob yourself!
Below another comment on a press article by Gareth van Onselen, Democratic Alliance Executive Director for Communication:
BACKGROUND: If you want to read about an organisation is serious decline, you should read the ANC’s latest Strategy and Tactics document (it is on the ANC’s website). It sets out, in no uncertain terms, the condition of the ruling party: corruption, indiscipline, unethical behaviour, it’s all there. In response, I see from SAPA (below), they are considering establishing an ‘Integrity Committee’, in order to “protect the image and integrity of the movement and its leadership”. (The person doing the proposing is Fikile Mbalula, who as Deputy Minister of Police spent R1.6 million on a BMW 740i and a Mercedes Benz ML500 with off-road trim and special seats; so no questions about his integrity.) The committee is interesting when viewed against some of the other things the ANC has proposed: the creation of a ‘new person’ (a local version of Stalin’s ‘new man’), a media tribunal to better instil the ANC’s values into society and a national debate on our identity (who we are). Here is an organisation with no qualms about invading private space and dictating to individuals and institutions the values by which they should live. And yet, at the same time, it is an organisation who’s own values and moral standards are in complete meltdown. There is only one thing more dangerous than a government determined to define identity, and that is a corrupted government trying to do the same thing. Even then, the latter should not detract from the undemocratic nature of the former: even if it wasn’t in some sort of ethical implosion, few things stand as a greater threat to individual freedom and liberty than a ruling party which thinks it knows who you should be.
South African Press Association
17 August 2010
ANC mulls integrity committee
Johannesburg - A proposal for the establishment of an integrity committee has been put forward for discussion at the party’s National General Council, ANC organiser Fikile Mbalula said on Tuesday.
“In order to protect the image and integrity of the movement and its leadership, it is proposed that a integrity committee should be established at national, provincial and regional level,” Mbalula said.
The committee would be tasked with looking into ANC members on possible “conflicts of interest” of those who hold office in the State and the party.
Its role would be investigative in nature. The outcome of probes it would undertake would then be referred to a disciplinary committee if necessary.
“This will protect ANC leaders from false accusations and malicious allegations of corruption and abuse of power,” Mbalula said.
The proposal for the committee was being discussed within the ANC structures and the process will be taken further at the party’s NGC in September.