Thomas Johnson - The Blog

 There's been the expected fulsome (definition: excessively flattering), even obsequious commentary on former ANC finance and public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan's death. On CapeTalk former ANC MP and political commentator Melanie Verwoed gushed about his sharp intellect like he was Stephen Hawking.  Most commentary including in Daily Maverick is about him being a supposed corruption fighter nonpareil. Intelligent he may have been but the rest is overblown. Intelligent as a politician and office bearer he wasn't. Gordhan was part of the ANC's system of patronage, corruption and managerial neglect who contributed to SA being where it is. He personally may not have been the recipient of ill-gotten financial gains, but he was part of a system of state-wide corruption, the worst anywhere in the world, who allowed corruption to proceed unstopped. His mild, hesitant and too late resistance to singular acts of corruption in the Zuma government, for which he was then and...

 South Africa's failing state under the ANC is no happenstance. It started soon after the 1994 elections.  Before the elections, colleagues asked what I thought of the ANC and who I'd vote for. I replied that while I did not trust the ANC and would not vote for them, I'd give them the benefit of doubt with Mandela as presumed president and as part of a government of national unity. I wasn't sitting on the fence, though. I did not trust them because of their political and moral turpitude inside and outside the country up to the elections. However, like most South Africans I was bouyed by optimism that against all odds we'd managed a miracle.  A minority were not sanguine, though, like a colleague who predicted conflict and decay and was emigrating with his family to England. I thought he'd given up before the challenges to build a democratic and prosperous nation had even started. And was disloyal to the country that had given him a professional qualification and...