There are lots of reasons the African National Congress has lost any claim to be a radical party. The shack in the photo is pretty typical of what you will find in Black townships. White people are seldom found in that sort of accommodation. Then there is the all pervasive corruption with which the party controls the state. But the downright oddest proof is a recent outburst by Jacob Zuma.
Here’s what he said:
“When you vote for the ANC you are choosing to go to heaven. When you don’t vote for the ANC, you should know that you are choosing that man who carries a fork…who cooks people.”
Zuma who apparently finds time to be a pastor reinforced the point by adding “When you are carrying an ANC membership card, you are blessed. When you get up there, there are different cards used but when you have an ANC card, you will be let through to go to heaven … When [Jesus] fetches us we will find [them] wearing black, green and gold, the holy ones belong to the ANC.”
That might be the theology of the Church of the Latter Day Kleptocrats but not even such objectionable god-botherers as Blair or Bush suggested, in public anyway, that if you didn’t vote for them you were hell bound. This is a tricky one for the godless. We just aren’t qualified to say if Zuma is right or not. Religious believers frequently say that their god variously tells them to sometimes kill people with whom they have what look like fairly trifling doctrinal differences or spend years working with the poor and sick. Surely some of them must be wrong sometimes. If they aren’t they are worshipping one seriously confused deity.
In South Africa Zuma’s remarks have created a bit of a fuss. African Christian Democratic Party president Kenneth Meshoe said they were a disgrace and he’s probably right. Not content with running a corrupt, bureaucratised world with 40% unemployment for the living Zuma wants to offer it as a vision of the hereafter too.
