ANC ‘loses Coloured voters’

JOHANNESBURG – The ANC’s internal squabbles have driven disillusioned coloureds in Gauteng to leave the party in droves.

The Citizen has learnt that the once ANC-affiliated South Western Joint Civic Association (Sowejoca) withdrew all its members (from more than 100 branches) from participation in the ruling party.

“The infighting, alleged corruption, nepotism, graft and total incompetence have led to the disillusionment with the ANC.

“The country is descending into a vortex of immoral decrepitude,” former parliamentarian and Sowejoca president Basil Douglas told The Citizen.

According to Douglas, more than 100 Sowejoca branches were “folded” into the ANC in August 2005 at the Noordgesig community hall, a ceremony presided over by Housing MEC Nomvula Mokonyane.

The Citizen is in possession of a letter (dated June 18, 2008) in which Douglas formally informs ANC provincial secretary David Makhura of his party membership termination, and that of Sowejoca. “It is our belief that the political dynamics within the ANC government versus the ANC party have made the party descend into political rigor mortis.

“This is compounded by a President who has lost touch with the masses,” Douglas wrote in the scathing letter.

He said the ANC had become “its own worms within the entrails of the body politic of South Africa.

“We refuse to be treated like some pliable, malleable and ductile domestic political franchise where political gatekeepers have consigned Sowejoca’s views and contributions to some deep freezers of political labyrinths,” the letter further read.

Douglas said the recent axing of Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool was a sign coloureds would be marginalised by the ANC.

(From The Citizen)