I’m Fony, vote for me!

It’s the month of May, time for the municipal elections. This column will make no effort at pretending that all political parties are equal. Rather, we’ll measure them by the same yardstick: Are they capable of governing with competence and honesty?

To pretend, as some of the younger journalists sometimes do, that all politicalparties should be heard with a straight face, would not be credible. Here’s the bottom line, upfront: The ANC is not capable of deploying sufficient numbers of competent people to govern our cities and towns. South Africa is proof of that. Lies cannot demand the same editorial space as facts.

Which brings us to your candidate for mayor of Cape Town, Comrade Tony Ehrenreich. Or, as he is also affectionately known, Fony Ehrlosreich. KameradEhren Reich. Herr Oberst Erring Reich. Or simply Mr Human because, as you know, to Ehr is Human.

About his opponent, Azanian immigrant Patricia de Lille, I have nothing to say. Although, to be fair, even when she represented Azania in Parliament, Comrade Patricia was a diligent exposer of ANC fraud and corruption. Such as the Arms Scandal. So let’s just say this: The party she now represents has provided good government wherever it came to power. And you don’t have to take my word for it, just consider this:

One province in South Africa run by the DA. The only province actually to use its full budget for infrastructure improvement. In plain English, dear voter, that means delivering the goods. One city in South Africa run by the DA. The best-run city in the country. One municipality in Gauteng run by the DA. Yep, Midvaal judged the best-run local authority in Gauteng. Ditto the Baviaans local authority in the Eastern Cape.

And who is in charge of all those other places, where the taxpayers’ money disappears, the minister’s incompetent girlfriend is appointed at R80 000 a month, the taps are without water, the streets transmogrify into a string of potholes and the sewage run down the streets? You’ve got it. The ANC of Fony Ehrenreich. He is fighting for your right to also live like that.

When I say he is affectionately known as Fony Ehrlosreich, I am not necessarily being sarcastic. Many people have sympathy with him because, shame you know, he has an impossible job. I mean, Helen Zille and her blue T-shirted DA candidates can simply go around telling the truth. How difficult can that be? But poor old, dear old Fony, he dares not mention the truth because the truth about the ANC in government is an ugly being. And smelling of sewage too. Not to mention hazardous and sometimes deadly. As in the ANC’s baby-killing hospitals.

So Fony has to make it up as he goes along. A new lie for every new day, such as the DA discriminating against the poor by building bicycle lanes. In the world according to Fony Ehrenreich, the rich ride bicycles and the poor drive cars. But the reality is that the poor battle to get to work on time because the trains aren’t running. And why not? Yep, that’s the little fact Fony is trying to avoid by complaining about cycle lanes. The trains do not run properly because of ANC mismanagement.

But does Fony complain about that? Of course not. The truth is not his friend. And then he is deeply hurt and outraged about the Cape Town Stadium, which Cosatu wanted at taxpayers’ expense for a political rally on May Day. The price tag for the stadium plus all the services required to cater for a mass meeting would have come to over a million rand, which, in the world of Fony Ehrenreich is proof of the pudding that the DA-run council is conspiring to keep the poor out of the town. The city is a paradise for the elite, says Fony, while the poor can’t come in.

But have no fear, Comrade Fony is fighting for the right of the elite to live just like the poor.

The truth he tried to hide this time, is that Cosatu was charged exactly the same as everybody else, including the 75% discount for Non-Profit Organizations. And what Fony ignores, being of normal ANC intelligence, is that someone has to pay. When his comrade the Minister flies to Switzerland to visit his girlfriend in prison, someone has to pay. And when the stadium is used for a rally, someone has to pay. Why should that someone be the taxpayers of the city instead of Cosatu?

Another piece of information Tony missed in Government 101 is that when you steal from the taxpayers, you don’t steal from those fat-cat whites you so dislike. You steal from the poor, because those stolen taxes are then in your pocket and not available for housing and schools and hospitals and roads and all the rest of the infrastructure provided better in the Western Cape than in ANC country. And on a bad day, when it was really hard to think of a lie, Fony tampered with the wording on DA posters. He had to apologize for that. This serious ANC candidate for a very high-profile position did not know his behavior was unethical.

Also, there was the time when the poor were, ahem, avoided. A point often made about the ANC’s destructive policy of deploying incompetent cadres because they’re somebody’s friends or to meet race quotas, is this: Would an ANC boss go under the knife with a surgeon who had qualified with a distinction in skin colour? Thanks to Fony, we know the answer. When he got really sick, he did not join the poor in a government hospital run down by the ANC. Then, only a private hospital was good enough.

But we cannot really blame him for that. I mean, subjecting yourself to the results of ANC government could be life-threatening.

And, as a horrified nation now knows, it could also be life-threatening to protest against the corruption and delivery failures of the ANC government. As with Hector Pieterson in 1976, we are in 2011 again staring with disbelief at the picture of an unarmed protestor dying in the arms of a crying and distraught comrade, dying after he was assaulted and shot by the police.

Yes, dear reader, Andries Tatane’s horrible death in the dusty streets of Ficksburg − that is how far the reality of ANC failure has come from the fiction of ANC propaganda.

And now that we are serious, we should take note of yet another threat by the ANC against our democracy. The persistent, racist assault against our judiciary, the high courts of our land that form our final defence against injustice and tyranny.

In pursuance of its goal to dominate every aspect of our lives through control of all the levers of state power, the courts are a very important target for the ANC’s national democratic revolution. Thus we have seen that the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) left vacancies on the Western Cape bench vacant rather than appoint white judges.

Last month the JSC interviewed seven candidates for three appointments to the Cape High Court. Only one of the candidates was black. He was the only one appointed. The other two appointments were not made, even though the candidates included members of the Cape Bar who are deeply experienced, knowledgeable and respected senior counsel.

Let there be no doubt that the ANC-dominated JSC has failed South Africa.

These were blatantly racist decisions, no more, no less. The threat is ANC tyranny.

From: On the Contrary, Pieter Schoombee’s column for Cape Business News, May 2011