{UAH} Quote: "we are not going to talk English any more like we are bewitched.”

Agang turns 'radical', won't speak English

  5 April 2015 15:01

Andries Tlouamma

Young and embattled party is changing direction and will now focus on becoming a pro-poor outfit

Two years after Agang SA was launched, the party is undergoing a makeover … an extreme makeover.

Gone are phrases like "rekindling the dream" that were eloquently enunciated by founder Mamphela Ramphele at Constitutional Hill in February 2013. Agang is going "radical" – and is even contemplating no longer communicating in English.

"We are not going to talk English any more like we are bewitched," Agang's acting president, Andries Tlouamma, said this week.

It's been a tempestuous two years for Agang. The party has been torn apart by factionalism. Its two MPs in the National Assembly admitted to journalists last month that they caucus through their lawyers.

The party is also struggling financially and owes millions to creditors, while the performance of its MPs in Parliament is highly questionable.

Against this background, Agang held its first national conference in Pretoria last weekend – not to elect leaders, but to amend its constitution.

The venue for the gathering was "a secret". It was kept under wraps from the media until two days before, for fear one of the party's factions may disrupt the gathering.

"We can't reveal the venue because we can't risk a disruption by those people," Tlouamma told parliamentary journalists during a press conference last month.

Following the conference, Tlouamma told City Press that Agang would change to become "a radical and pro-poor" outfit.

"One of the major decisions we have made is that we are not going to be just a party for the middle class. We need to come with policies that will speak to the hearts and minds of the poor, but we are not pro-socialism.

"We believe in progressive ideas, but we need to go back to basics and make sure that we lift up everyone, whether they are educated or not."

Tlouamma said the party was seeking to move away from being "a party of Mamphela" and will ditch some of her policy ideas, only retaining one or two, including her outlook on education, the call to change South Africa's electoral system and the scrapping of Setas.

Tlouamma said going forward, in principle and strategically, Agang will be radical. "If you thought [Julius] Malema was radical, we will show you he is a sissy.

"We are not going to speak good English any more. [In fact], we are not going to talk English any more like we are bewitched."

He said it was problematic that once elected, public representatives spoke English when communicating with their constituents or when speaking on their behalf.

"That's how they even start dreaming like the British."

One of Agang's "radical" plans will be a demand that wealthy public representatives like Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa open their books and state publicly how they made their money.

The party is also planning to stage protest marches to the homes of those ministers and mayors who are failing to deliver on their mandates.

"We will camp at their homes until they resign," Tlouamma said.

However, Agang's ability to implement these radical plans is questionable. Tlouamma revealed that the party was nonexistent and was still trying to establish structures in two provinces, one being the Northern Cape. But he could not remember the second province.

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