By Sthabiso Mdledle – Respected political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi has blamed the African National Congress (ANC) for the chaos and violence in parliament. This emerged last week in a public forum that was hosted by civil society organisation, the Democracy Development Program (DDP) at Elangeni Hotel in Durban, where Matshiqi was the keynote speaker.

Respected political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi has blamed the African National Congress (ANC) for the chaos and violence in parliament. This emerged last week in a public forum that was hosted by civil society organisation, the Democracy Development Program (DDP) at Elangeni Hotel in Durban, where Matshiqi was the keynote speaker.

Matshiqi was particularly referring to the chaos and violence that preceded the 2017 State of the Nation Address (SONA) that was delivered by president Jacob Zuma in parliament on February 9. He said that since 2014, violence and chaos has characterised the SONA and other key seatings where the president made an appearance.

He said: “It is a direct product of the internal ANC dynamics prior to the 2007 Polokwane conference of the ANC while those who supported Zuma and those who supported Thabo Mbeki (former RSA president) were at war with one another. Those who supported Zuma decided to step out of the ANC’s disciplinary framework in order to defeat the Mbeki campaign.”

“Outside of that Pietermaritzburg court, Julius Malema (then ANC youth league president) stood and said because of this judgement, if the MEC of the ANC does not recall Mbeki, we will recall you (Mbeki) and within days Mbeki was toast. I remember the same Julius Malema saying they were prepared to kill and die for Zuma.  Saying we do not care whether Zuma is corrupt if needs be we will share his jail-cell with him after he is convicted,” Matshiqi said recalling the words on Malema.

Matshiqi said we must distinguish between the SONA, the state of the nation and the state our democracy. “These are not the same, I am convinced that the speech was not about our nation nor our democracy, these have become 3 different things”. Matshiqi said the address was un-inspirational and it did not clarify the vision South Africa will change the direction she is going.

Matshiqi said he was not disappointed by the content of the address which spoke mostly of radical economic transformation, land reform and race.

According to Matshiqi, it is clear that the ruling party, opposition parties particularly the Democratic Alliance (DA) and all other parties are already in campaign for the 2019 elections.

He added that the reason for the ANC’s sudden discovery of the Radical Socio Economic Transformation, is because since 1994 the party has been talking right but walking left.

The forum concluded with a dialogue amongst the attendees (mostly civil society members) answering the question of what the president should have said and what they as citizens can do achieve success outside of the failures of the SONA.