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Do you remember Agang?

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After lots of internal strife and court actions it appears that Agang is no longer A…..Gang – their Twitter account was last updated in September 2014, their Facebook page was last updated in April 2015, their agangsa-taskteam.org site is nowhere to be found. This, despite still being registered on a National level with the IEC.

One wonders how those 33 687 people who ‘liked’ Agang SA on Facebook feel now – betrayed?

For an indication of just what went wrong and how much debt Agang SA accumulated read what Philip Machanick has to say in a piece titled ‘Why I Quit Agang‘.

On 15 May 2013 Agang SA leader Mamphela Ramphele fired up her campaign in Nelson Mandela Bay at the NMMU, warning university students to fiercely reject being labelled as irrelevant and illegitimate citizens because they believed in excellence.

Speaking to a packed lecture hall at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Ramphele said: “There is a culture of making academics illegitimate. So if you excel, then there is something wrong with you because the rest of us are mediocre. You must absolutely reject that.”

While some hailed her for inspiring them, others said her talk was nothing more than philosophical babble meant to psych them up and offering no solutions.

Flanked by young volunteers, Ramphele, a newcomer to South Africa’s post- democratic politics, targeted young citizens whom she believes are more eager to develop the country than their parents.

After her speech she travelled to various spots in Port Elizabeth including Kwazakhele.

Now all we will have as memories are a couple of blurry images:

Students from NMMU who were inspired by Dr. Ramphele’s speech accompanied Agang to Zakhele to take part in activities.

Image by Agang SA

Agang South Africa was formed by anti-apartheid activist Mamphela Ramphele on 18 February 2013, although the party claims on its website that it was founded on 22 June 2013, which was the date of the party’s first official congress.

The party encourages reforms towards direct governance, striving to “build a stronger democracy in which citizens will be at the centre of public life” and intends to challenge the governing African National Congress in the 2014 general election. Agang is a Sotho–Tswana word meaning “let us build”.

On 28 January 2014, the Democratic Alliance (DA) announced that Ramphele had accepted an invitation to stand as its presidential candidate in the 2014 general election, and the DA and Agang were set to merge. On 31 January 2014, Ramphele stated that she would not take up DA party membership and would remain the leader of Agang, resulting in confusion. On 2 February 2014, Helen Zille stated that Ramphele had reneged on her agreement to stand as the DA’s presidential candidate. Ramphele subsequently apologised for the reversal of her decision, saying that the timing was not right as the reaction to it had shown people were unable to overcome race-based party politics. On 9 February 2014, following statements by Helen Zille that donor funding issues were behind the failed merger, Ramphele named business magnate Nathan Kirsh as a funder of Agang and said he would continue to fund the new party.

In the 2014 election, the party received 52,350 votes, or 0.28% of the total, and won two seats in the National Assembly of South Africa. Following internal conflict within the party, Ramphele announced her withdrawal from politics on 8 July 2014

NMMU

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Port Elizabethan

This author is a 'catch-all' for occasional articles and letters written to MyPE. The Author of each article can be found in the signature at the bottom of each individual article.