POLL | What do you think of Lindiwe Sisulu running for presidency?

Tourism minister and MP Lindiwe Sisulu has officially thrown her hat into the ring and will challenge President Cyril Ramaphosa at the ANC’s elective conference in December.

According to News24, Sisulu will contest the position against ANC bigwigs, including deputy president David Mabuza and former health minister Zweli Mkhize.

According to the Sunday Times, this will be Sisulu’s second attempt at the presidency. In 2017, she contested the position alongside Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, but lost to Ramaphosa. 

The minister, who penned an op-ed about inequality and injustice in the country, drew mixed response as some commended her for “speaking out” while others were critical of her being part of the system that has further impoverished poor black South Africans for 27 years.

Sisulu questioned the role of the new constitution which prevailed in 1994 under the guise of “the rule of law”, saying it had achieved nothing for Africans who were living in a “sea of poverty”.

She described colonialism as an organised crime that enabled the stealing of land and other resources. Years later, she said, Africans were still economically excluded and left to manage poverty while others managed wealth.

Sisulu accused politicians of engaging in “stomach politics” with the elite, at the expense of the poor. 

“What we have instead witnessed under a supreme constitution and the rule of law since 1994 has been the co-option and invitation of political power brokers to the dinner table, whose job is to keep the masses quiet in their sufferance while they dine caviar with colonised capital.

“After dinner, many things take place under the table and around the table. Some call it stomach politics. The politicians take care of themselves and their families while those who put them there go to bed hungry, waiting for crumbs from the table,” she wrote.