'Tenderinitis' is plaguing the ANC

This disease is potentially fatal if it goes untreated, and moral deficiency syndrome marks its final phase

- Bhekisisa Mncube

Ah, Chief Dwasaho! Our country is sick. The prognosis isn't looking great, so I began my letter to you on 20 August 2020. Five years later - still no answer from the highest office in the land. My plea for bold leadership to save our country from impending doom has been met with radio silence.

It's one thing not to respect me, but quite another to ignore a plea made on behalf of 63.02 million South Africans. Although I do not matter in the higher echelons of power or the grand theatre of our body politic, I, son of MaMlambo, have sent Country South Africa for a second opinion a thorough medical checkup.

In the ANC's paper trail, this would be stamped with that old exile mantra: unmandated reflections. That's the label slapped on inconvenient truths and their messengers before being filed where sunlight never visits.

My political physician reports that most civil servants, the wives of ANC leaders and ANC leaders themselves suffer from the viral disease called tenderinitis. This is a condition of moral depravity that attacks and disables the core of what makes us human. It propels its sufferers to unearned riches and vain applause.

Take the Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA), which recently awarded a contract worth R521-million for a biometrics deal to a company with no directors - yes, you heard correctly, no one at the head, yet a multimillion-rand contract still walked out the door. The GPAA has already paid R43-million to LCS Technologies, which Companies and Intellectual Property Commission records show is being deregistered for annual return noncompliance, before it had completed a single line of work.