There is an old African expression that says: When the elephants fight it is the grass that suffers.
The fight for power between the two old elephants of South African politics, the DA and the ANC, has brought nothing but suffering for our people.
Their fight doesn’t put food on the tables of hungry families. It doesn’t deliver clean water and sanitation to our people. It doesn’t create safer communities for our women and girls. It doesn’t create jobs for ourselves, or hope for our children. The rich continue enjoying their swimming pools and well-irrigated flower gardens, while the poor don’t have clean water to drink.
We established GOOD because we don’t want to participate in that death dance. We don’t want to participate in their corruption. We don’t want to continue living in a divided country, where the few get everything while most of the people get virtually nothing.
When we see our people still living in the dirt in informal settlements and broken down houses – when we see our children’s future disappear before our eyes without the hope of decent jobs – we understand that these elephants aren’t fighting for us.
They have no interest in us, besides our votes. Their interest is power and control over the people’s tax money, for themselves. Whether you live in Oudtshoorn, Dysselsdorp, Pacalstdorp, Mitchell’s Plain, New Brighton, Alexandra, Khayelitsha: Look around you. What do you see? How do you feel? Are you satisfied with what the elephant fight has delivered for you?
When we formed GOOD we said we’d be different. We committed ourselves to being a constructive, not destructive, opposition party. We’d work with those in power, not to support their fights, but to try and leverage the benefits we can for our people.
President Ramaphosa’s invitation to me to become a member of his executive last year tested that commitment. Because of my willingness to serve my country I accepted the offer, rolled up my sleeves and started sweeping out the dirt.
After the results of the Super Wednesday by-elections in November, in which many voters turned their back on her party, for GOOD, the DA’s Helen Zille said the “greatest warning sign, overall, was the percentage drop in coloured support in the ‘rural’ Western Cape wards we contested”.
This, Zille said, was largely due to the DA’s “extremely clumsy and, frankly incomprehensible treatment of Patricia de Lille”.
South Africans deserve more from their elected leaders than opposing each other for the sake of it, without proposing how to improve the lives of the people.
They deserve more than dishonest politicians who place the interests of party factions above those of ordinary people. GOOD is a movement for all good South Africans. We say let’s get these old elephants behind fences – or prison bars, where many belong – and begin to build a country that considers every one of its citizens equally precious.
Stop the nonsense and give the grass time to grow.
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