Worldview: Despite being indelibly associated with cronyism, the latest polls show Jacob Zuma’s MK party posing a real threat to his old ANC comrades
Jacob Zuma: allegations against him of corruption, and the accompanying 'political persecution', serve only to rally the faithful. Photograph: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP via Getty
And yet, although Zuma is indelibly associated with what has been called “state capture”, a system of cronyism and backhanders that reached up to the highest levels, his po-faced promise now is to restore integrity to the government. Drain the swamp.What if your salary was tax free and materials were taxed instead?
The latest polls show MK posing a very significant threat to his old comrades, not least in the two most populous provinces, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, where the ANC holds majorities in the legislatures. The largest poll gains were recorded for the main opposition Democratic Alliance , up four percentage points to 27 per cent, and 13 per cent for Zuma’s new MK. The far left Economic Freedom Fighters , an earlier breakaway from the ANC, were at 10 per cent . In KwaZulu-Natal, MK now appears set to be the largest party, on 25 per cent of the vote, with the anti-immigrant Inkatha Freedom Party on 19 per cent.
One old ANC stalwart, Mavuso Msimang, the head of the ANC’s Veterans League, who resigned over corruption and then retracted his resignation recently,. “Of course, the ANC did not invent corruption. We inherited a morally bankrupt state and that was built on the most profound forms of corruption.
The poll finds, however, that more than half the country’s 27 million voters blame “the ANC government of the last three decades” for the country’s problems. Only 11 per cent say apartheid was to blame. Widespread dissatisfaction with ANC governance increasingly trumps any legacy loyalty to the liberation movement.
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