The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has an "amazing self-belief" that because it demands a majority among the electorate, it has a divine right to do "what it wants, when it likes", official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon charged on Friday.

Leon said this is similar to what the United States Republican party had believed until it got a recent electoral thumping.

The ANC believes it can deploy "whomever it likes to do any job it deems appropriate for that person -- regardless of his or her suitability for office", he said, adding that it is time for President Thabo Mbeki to break his wall of silence on a range of controversies.

Leon noted that he does not think that in 12 years of democracy he has ever seen the ANC and the government "so defensive about so many issues simultaneously".

In his weekly internet column, SA Today, the DA leader said: "There is [former ANC chief whip] Tony Yengeni, not satisfied with having been convicted of defrauding Parliament and who has now apparently breached his parole conditions.

"In addition, there is police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi, embroiled in a cloud of controversy over his relations with underworld figures, including Glen Agliotti who was yesterday [Thursday] arrested on charges of murdering Brett Kebble.

"The doleful roll call continues. [Current] ANC chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe stands accused of sexual harassment amongst a slew of other allegations; Linda Mti, the commissioner of prisons, was forced to resign after being arrested for drunk driving and following allegations surrounding the illegal awarding of tenders to companies with which he was allegedly associated.

"Much of this is carried out in the name of racial transformation, which instead of being used as a tool of redress has simply become a blunt instrument in the hands of the ANC to perpetuate its power and place its cronies atop every nook and cranny of public -- and increasingly private -- life in South Africa."

Leon argued that Mbeki is at the centre of many of these crises "although he generally refuses directly, or actively, to engage with them".

Mbeki handpicked every director general in every government department and certainly the police commissioner and the ANC's chief whips.

"We have already seen one fall disastrously from grace -- all the way to a prison cell -- while the current incumbent seems destined for a well-earned tumble too."

Leon charged that "the Goniwes of this world hold sway in the ANC for the simple reason that -- unlike in the United States, as President [George] Bush has just discovered -- South African voters do not yet punish the governing party for the corruption, for the rampant crime affecting every household in this country, for the cronyism and the back-scraping and the baantjies vir boeties [cronyism] which constitutes the tender processes in many government departments.

"Thabo Mbeki may well be credited -- correctly -- for getting many of the economic fundamentals right; yet he also deserves a profound amount of blame for converting government into a virtual ethics-free zone," he said.

It is time for the president to break his wall of silence and to stop backing his political allies "no matter in how much serious trouble they land themselves".

Leon noted that it was under Goniwe's "malign influence" that Parliament took the extraordinary decision to censure DA chief whip Douglas Gibson -- the only MP to be thus arraigned in the 12-year history of the democratic Parliament.

"Why? For effectively standing on the pavement outside the president's house asking legitimate questions about how much the taxpayer may be contributing to the cost of the project," he concluded. 

With acknowledgements to Donwald Pressly, I-Net Bridge and Mail & Guardian.