PRETORIA. After fifteen years in power the ANC has for the first time threatened to sack non-performing ministers, saying that the groundbreaking concept to stop rewarding incompetence went against everything the new South Africa stood for but was necessary if the ruling party was going to carry out effective purges inside its organization.
Speaking to journalists this morning ANC spokesman Yesman Mxenge said that the new concept, called "accountability", had sowed panic and confusion among ANC backbenchers.
"The problem is that it's a very high-end concept," said Mxenge. "I'm not sure I understand it myself.
"In a nutshell, it's basically that if you don't do the job you're being paid half a million a year to do, you don't get fired.
"Wait, no, you do get fired. That's the part that keeps tripping us up."
Asked if the new concept had been inspired by discontent from the electorate, Mxenge said that while voters' opinions were very important they were not very important at all.
"It's a two-way relationship," he said. "The masses put us here, and we keep the masses there. We're happy with that relationship, and I'm sure they are too."
He added that the masses "don't really seem to care" whether ANC politicians were competent or not.
"We've won a bigger majority in every election we've contested, despite doubling the number of hours our backbenchers sleep in their offices every year, and quadrupling the catering budget."
He said the dramatic breakthrough had come unexpectedly at a meeting of senior party leadership where Jacob Zuma was reading through a list of his enemies in the party and "wondering aloud how he could purge them from the ANC without frightening white business".
"Just then Comrade Julius Malema redeployed himself from his playroom into the meeting, pushing one of his toy fire-engines in front of him and making siren sounds, and suggested that they set enemies on fire so that he could put them out with his fire-engine."
He said they had discussed the possibility of incinerating opponents but had ultimately decided against it, as there would be significant legal costs involved, as well as a carbon footprint.
"That's when they came up with firing," said Mxenge. "It goes counter to everything this country stands for, just firing incompetent people without offering them two years of paid leave, but the purge can't wait.
"People. I meant people. Not the purge. The people can't wait."
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