OPINION- About a week ago, minus a day, I stood in the rain as the party my parents raised me to praise and worship as the liberators of my rights discarded several tenets of the constitution they helped construct.

I stood in front of Parliament’s glass doors as we journalists witnessed men in plain clothes enter the National Assembly’s wooden doors, to escort rowdy Economic Freedom Fighters Members of Parliament out of the house. Signals were jammed, punches were thrown, and as Democratic Alliance Parliamentary Leader Mmusi Maimane on Tuesday said during the first round of debates on the State of the Nation Address: hearts were broken.

My heart was broken, at first I was in awe at the mass rebellion against, and disregard for, the seemingly titanium strength rules of Parliament. President Jacob Zuma had made a fool of himself once again, and his cronies, Speaker Baleka Mbete and others unknowingly aided him towards his own demise. They did this ironically; with the intention to protect him from political harm, they caused it.

This will be a short one, for those who know, I grew up in a home with the Struggle [in capital letters] hanging above my head at all times. The ANC was akin to a godly figure, and its ideals and ideologies near to scripture. But over the last six years I have seen a purge in those ideals, those hard fought ideologies that are used as simulacrum, empty and bereft of its original content. The ANC we have today is not the first political party I knew.

And for many others the disappointment runs even deeper. The last six years have turned into a theft of a great block in the wall that is our identity. The African National Congress has been spoiled, by veering towards what they say they abhor: corruption is rife, cronyism is rife, self serving intentions are rife, while ‘students sleep’ on the floor, as Julius Malema said Tuesday.

We are a poor nation, but Thursday’s inaction in being honest with the nation while speaking to them, stole away any support the ANC may have still had in me. VOC (Andriques Che Petersen)