Articles in Monday’s edition by Paul Hoffman and Ann Bernstein both pointed the finger at the fundamental flaw bedevilling the ANC: corruption (“Getting off the greylist requires mindset shift” and “Business must lean on government to fix NPA”, October 14).

Superficially, I have often thought no leader in the ANC, certainly not President Cyril Ramaphosa, has the guts shown by FW de Klerk when he initiated the steps that led to SA becoming a constitutional democracy. That took enormous guts and was full of risk. The solution here now has to involve genuinely cleaning up the ANC, setting the country right and getting off the Financial Action Task Force greylist.

Ramaphosa has dabbled and regularly pays lip service to it, but that’s as far as he goes. The organisations to achieve it are underfunded and government-dependent, and blatant cases are not dealt with even when in his direct hands, like our minister of justice.

Wits School of Governance professor William Gumede said ages ago that the ANC has to split to separate the straight, public servant politicians from the self-serving crooks. Former president Thabo Mbeki came up recently with a proposal for the ANC to start over again by having every member reapply for membership.

Jacob Zuma has partially accomplished it. But it is starting to become clear that aside from him not being prepared to go down in history as the leader who broke up the ANC, the real reason Ramaphosa will not deal with the situation is simpler: the ANC is so deeply rotten that if you eject all the crooks it is unclear there would be any ANC left.

Roger Briggs
Edenvale