Mervyn Bennun

Dear Jessie Duarte, Deputy Secretary-General and Mike Hastie, Secretary of the Gaby Shapiro Branch of the ANC, I write in great pain. I ask that this letter ...

As I am unable to respond with honesty, confidence and dignity to criticisms, I feel that I have no choice but to resign my membership. The state of the public health service in South Africa is a nightmare. One consequence of this failure is that the South African educational system has created its own obscene image: a school learner drowning in faeces in a collapsed toilet. I was a member of the Modern Youth Society in Cape Town and of the Congress of Democrats from its start. That the ANC leadership does not unite in outrage at this public shame has made me lose confidence in the ANC’s capacity to lead reconstruction. I have to speak out, even if my voice is but a whisper in the thunder of the history of the African National Congress (ANC). Daily Maverick described “ theft and corruption of disaster relief funding as a crime against humanity, a treason against the people”. I agree with this. The ANC has committed itself to strengthening and deepening democracy. Imagine how I felt when I was deployed to address a meeting of Welsh miners, or of a local branch of the Trades Union Congress, or of some other formation which had pledged itself to support our struggle. I was born in 1936, and as a schoolboy in 1951 I joined Joe Slovo, Ruth First and others in Sophiatown selling the Guardian and the titles that followed its banning. I loved doing that, whether at dinner tables or when deployed to address meetings or in what I wrote and published. Dear Jessie Duarte, Deputy Secretary-General and Mike Hastie, Secretary of the Gaby Shapiro Branch of the ANC, I write in great pain.