The Daily Maverick is turning into a mighty good read. The website, launched by Branko Brkic from Maverick and Empire magazines fame, is fast becoming one of the must read sites in South Africa through its insightful, mostly intelligent and opinionated content.
One story that recently caught my attention was a short overview on the year ahead for COPE (Congress of the People), you know that political one night stand so many liberal commentators had a fling with, in which the author suggested that the ANC “really deserves to be in power.”
The story read as a conversation between reporter Stephen Grootes and a Daily Maverick editor. The comment flew past unchallenged.
Of course many in South Africa believe that the ANC deserves to be in power, and looking at the alternatives, maybe it does. My issue, I suppose, is that when comments like these appear in local media it simply underlines what the ANC leadership itself believes, namely that it deserves to rule this country ’till Jesus comes back (some folks would read this as forever).
In the context of a discussion around the future of one of the few potentially viable opposition parties in the country I thought the point should have been explored in more detail if it had to go unchallenged.
In power since 1994, and with opposition parties struggling to gain traction, it seems less an issue of being deserving than of default.