The presidency of Jacob Zuma will plunge South Africa into another Zimbabwe if voters do not "punish" the ANC in the upcoming elections, says United Democratic Movement (UDM) leader Bantu Holomisa.

The ANC under Zuma is "threatening and undermining" every institution of democracy in the country, says Holomisa.

His view is that Zimbabweans - who have suffered years of repression under Robert Mugabe's unpopular government - will become better off than South Africans.

"They (ANC) are continuing, on a daily basis, to embarrass the country. How on earth are you going to parachute someone who is a suspect - with a police docket - as the president of the country? No way, we cannot allow that," says Holomisa.

The voters should punish the ANC, he says.

"The Zimbabweans are lucky because they are almost on the edge of the river... to get to a glorified future. South Africa is still on the other side of the river, we are still going to swim across, following the footsteps that Zimbabwe has been through," says Holomisa.

But Holomisa does not think he is being "alarmist", as I suggested. "The writing is already there," he responds. "Why attack the judges? Why disband the Scorpions and (want to) change the SABC board if it gives opposition parties coverage? If the voters were to punish the ANC, we would not go the Zimbabwe way."

But the ANC has rejected Holomisa's assertion as "absolute rubbish", with spokesperson Lindiwe Zulu saying that the ruling party respects democracy and the Constitution.

"We have a Constitution which we respect, which even (Zuma) has continuously said he respects. Therefore for anyone to align us to Zimbabwe shows that they don't have South Africa's interests at heart," says Zulu.

But despite his strong criticism of the ANC, Holomisa has not ruled out the possibility of working with the ruling party after the polls.

"Post the elections we don't know who we will form coalitions with. If we are invited (to a coalition) we will look at what the voters wanted, that has been our principle. If we don't join them when they invite us... we can't be seen to be frustrating (the functioning of) government. If the ANC invites us the (UDM) national executive committee will consider that. We will work with whoever wins," he says.

Holomisa is convinced his party will make a better showing in the upcoming polls, despite the emergence of COPE. This sounds ambitious, considering he only managed to get two percent in the last elections and that his party's human and financial resources were further depleted by floor-crossing.

The UDM's support base in the last two elections has showed a significant decline.

However, Holomisa still maintains the UDM remains a suitable alternative to the ANC. His party, he says, will not lose support to COPE; instead he stands to gain from the ANC split.

"COPE is not a threat to the UDM. I think it's a threat to the ANC because they have a score to settle. The DA might be scared of COPE because if COPE gets more than 10 percent (of the vote) it can threaten the power base of the DA as the official opposition," he says.

After all, says Holomisa, COPE is good for opposition politics. "Even if the DA says something sensible they would be accused of being white *1... of being previous oppressors. With COPE, (the ANC) can't question their struggle credentials."
 

• This article was originally published on page 2 of The Cape Argus on February 22, 2009

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