The ANC endorsed the DA. Why is it surprised its voters agreed?

The ANC chose the DA as its preferred partner in government — and is now shocked that its own voters made the same choice.

I am surprised by the number of what President Zuma once called "clever blacks" who have taken to social media to express their shock that black South Africans — in the Pan-African sense of what black is: black African, coloured and Indian — went and voted the DA into power in some of our biggest metros, "booting out" the ANC.

I am even more surprised by the number of ANC supporters expressing the same outrage.

So, let me get this straight. You had the biggest chance to form the largest black-majority government in our history — one with the numbers to change the Constitution itself.

Every black political party in the country was available to you. Instead, you chose to get in bed with the DA: a party formed and run by apartheid beneficiaries, a party the Constitutional Court had to stop from implementing apartheid spatial planning in the only province it governs. You called it a "government of national unity." And now you are surprised that your followers are voting for your chosen partner?

You went out there and endorsed the DA as the best party by far, ahead of every black political party in the land — and you do not understand why you are losing to it, or why the rest of the black vote is scattered among Oppenheimer-funded parties such as Rise Mzansi?

I am a bit confused. You should not be. You created this.

There could be no better way to tell every black person frustrated with your pally-pally attitude with whites exactly where they stand.

At the expense of the black child who obtains a degree only to languish at home with no job. Of the old lady who waits for hours in humiliating queues for her pension when the process could be digitised overnight.

...Of the black entrepreneur who was getting a slice of all government tenders under the Zuma administration and whom you shut out under Cyril Ramaphosa's horrific reign.

This is a government in which Gayton McKenzie — an ex-convict — can openly contradict your own foreign policy on Israel and Palestine and keep his job as Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, while you showed no hesitation in firing Lindiwe Sisulu, one of the best ministers this country has produced.

Who exactly are you kidding, ANC? You claim to be in power to move the entire country forward, yet the most significant things you do advance the white cause at the expense of the black majority. And today you are shocked that the DA is beating you at the polls?

That is preposterous. Even you must know that you reap what you sow.

Your next devastating defeat is already on its way, because I am convinced you have lost your way so thoroughly that there is no hope of you ever reclaiming the spirit of liberation that so passionately guided you — before the silk shirts, the luxury cars and the big houses, while your people starve.

If I were the DA, I would be sending you a thank-you card. Never in history has a liberation movement so generously endorsed its former oppressors — and then stood bewildered as a people who bled and died to liberate their country walked to the polls and voluntarily handed it back to their former political oppressor, who remains their economic master.

ERIC MIYENI IS A MULTI-TALENTED SOUTH AFRICAN WRITER, ACTOR, FILMMAKER AND WELL-KNOWN TALK RADIO HOST. HE HOLDS A BA LAW DEGREE AND HAS BUILT A REPUTATION AS A SHARP, OUTSPOKEN CULTURAL COMMENTATOR ON POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA. HE WRITES IN HIS PERSONAL CAPACITY.