At times in our interview this week, I got the sense that DA Federal Chair Helen Zille was more hopeful than confident that Ditsobotla would vote for change today. That despite the ANC’s locust impersonation which has destroyed much of the district’s infrastructure. And such intense infighting within the party that it was forced to admit the municipality was so dysfunctional it required dissolution of the council and a full re-run of the November 2021 poll.
If the Ditsobotla electorate embrace mass Stockholm Syndrome and once again vote against their own best interests, Zille and other democrats shouldn’t lose heart. It’s worth remembering that in mid-1987 when US president Ronald Reagan delivered his “tear down this (Berlin) Wall” speech at the Brandenburg Gate, he was dismissed as politically naïve.
Yet less than two and a half years later – on November 9, 1989 – the Berlin Wall did indeed come tumbling down. That was followed two years later by the even more unthinkable collapse of the Soviet Union itself. What seemed impossible a few years earlier, became, with hindsight, something which any rational being could see was going to happen.
So whatever the outcome of voting in Ditsobotla today, democrats should take heart. In our Young Democracy voters need time to fully appreciate their power. The ANC’s collapse is inevitable. And like the Berlin Wall, may well happen a lot sooner than any of the pundits think. Certainly well before the unlamented Jacob Zuma’s “Second Coming” prediction.
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