Is the ANC of today counter revolutionary?

There are some pretty uncomfortable questions we ought to ask of the African National Congress, for its own sake and ours as a nation. Regardless of what people think of the ANC, our fates are bound to it. It is for this reason that everyone must show interest in its dealings. We cannot follow sheepishly what the leadership tells us is gospel truth — especially when it is manufactured to suit those who seek to lead us. No one should hope for the implosion of the ANC, for its demise means we too shall perish. The perfect example is ZANUPF of Zimbabwe.

The desire to see a better African National Congress requires that we defend and criticise it when and if the need arises. It is a mistake to behave as though it is perfect — that its leaders can do no wrong. It is precisely because it is run by flesh and blood beings that it is imperfect, just like any organisation or company.

We have witnessed our leaders’ fallibilities time and time again, which explains why the people have become cynical of politics and have rightly lost faith in their leaders.

Whenever a shining light presents itself, all attempts to extinguish it are made. Like the voice of ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe. When he said that the judiciary should remain independent, ANCYL spokesperson Floyd Shivambu was quoted saying that Motlanthe’s “Going around affirming the independence of the criminal justice system on the case of the ANC president is worrisome.” How is affirming the independence of the judiciary worrisome? Does that statement even make sense? If the statement by the YL’s spokesperson were a joke, it would be a really fun one. Sadly, we are not laughing.

A member of the National Working Committee was quoted by the City Press as saying “Motlanthe creates the impression that all of us are a mad mob and that he is the only saviour, the sole voice of reason, and that he is better than all of us.” This says a lot about some people in there. They seem to recognise (with great reluctance I might add) that they are indeed a mob, and know that there is indeed a lone voice of reason. Instead of applauding it, the mob besieges it and tries to drown it out, not with logic, but with loud voices.

If I am not mistaken, rule 3.7 on the Character of the ANC in its constitution says the following: “The principles of freedom of speech and free circulation of ideas and information will operate within the ANC.”

When a senior member, the deputy president of the ANC, is dragged through the mud for exercising his rights as observed by the constitution, can we truly say that the principles of freedom of speech and the free circulation of ideas operate within the ANC? If this is contrary to what the ANC is meant to represent then can we not say that the ANC is losing its way?

Was it not the ANC that set in motion our constitution? Was it not the ANC that voted and made sure that we have an independent judiciary at the dawn of our democracy? Some have even said that we risk anarchy if Jacob Zuma goes to trial. It is better we have anarchy defending the independence of the judiciary than have a bench full of lackeys.

If Motlanthe’s goal is indeed the presidency, as some have claimed, then this would be a very bad way of playing his cards. He knows who will put him at the helm – the very people he is criticising. Perhaps he has come to realise that the country and the party are too important for him to remain silent while he watches people squabble over a leader — not ideology. He knows that voicing his true thoughts could cost him the presidency or influence should ANC President Jacob Zuma go to jail. It is for this reason that I applaud him for speaking out even though it is politically inconvenient for him. Lincoln once said, “Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

We have lost our appetite of fighting real battles. We have become accustomed to frivolity. And so, as we search for a meaning as a nation, we find meaning in money, getting drunk and getting laid. Sometimes people do all three at the same time. These are the examples that have been set before us by our leaders.

As much as I respect our leaders (some with great reluctance I have to admit), I respect what the ANC should be more. Since it is not what it should be and since it is further away from what it should be than it was five or even ten years ago, then we can say that it is inching away from its revolutionary mandate.

Our leaders have not lived up to their responsibilities to this great organisation.

We have become accustomed to the daily tragic comedy that has become a way of life for our politics. And we watch bemused, as though watching a very bad episode of Generations.

The ANC of Chief Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela was never about battling one another for power. Maybe they had bigger things to worry about than fight so publicly and so dirty amongst themselves. Maybe they were too busy fighting apartheid. Maybe they were too busy fighting for their freedom. Maybe they had higher ideals than to squabble about power, position and prestige.

Not all the current leaders are men of questionable character, reputation or intention. But just because a man’s character and his intentions don’t seem to be questionable does not mean he must not be questioned. This is to protect us from him and him from power. Because power, as we see every day, corrupts.

We should not and must not treat the ANC as though it were a perfect organisation, led by men and woman who are all perfect, and with nothing but perfect objectives. Some may have good intentions – for themselves. It is at this point that we need to make sure that members and leaders don’t confuse the good intentions they have for themselves as good intentions for the party or the state.

I suppose even questioning the current ANC leaders as counter revolutionary could be viewed as counter revolutionary. It is a never-ending cycle. It might be no different from a parishioner of the Roman Catholic Church calling the Pope and his Cardinals heretics.

The ANC seems to be at ease with its current disorderly conduct; it is time we made it uncomfortable so that we, the people, can be at ease with the future of nation. Right now, we are not. Our leaders are supposed to give us confidence for the future. So far they are failing. Dismally.

I am a South African and I refuse to be ashamed

Of course we cannot feel pride for what we witnessed in Alexandra in the last couple of weeks. Hanging our heads in shame and writing lamentations will not change what has happened. We could express our dissatisfaction at what appeared to be a lack of leadership. We could even say that Thabo Mbeki spoke up too late. But the real problem are those who among us have sat quietly while they heard people call foreigners names, accusing them of blanket stereotypes. Our silence allowed for this wave of violence.

We are all to blame.

The best thing that could have happened to South Africa are these xenophobic attacks. In fact, I can name a few other crises that we face that could be good for the nation. Electricity cuts, crime, murder, possible water shortages, skills shortages, emigration, the racial attacks such as the ones we experienced at the Free State University. These are just some of the great obstacles we are facing us as a nation. And I think that it is fantastic. In case most think that this is a rather lame attempt at sarcasm, I assure you, it is not. I am being very serious because we need to wake up.

This is an opportunity for us to stand up together and tackle the difficulties we have put ourselves in. To blame external forces would allow us to relinquish our control over what we can do to overcome. It is precisely because Mugabe abdicated responsibility for the land mess in Zimbabwe that that nation is now on life support. It is true that Britain reneged on certain agreements, but the moment Mugabe gave up his right to control the destiny of his nation was the beginning of his own end, unfortunately he took the rest of his country with him to hell. Zimbabwe will be resurrected from the ashes. The same cannot be said of Mugabe. He has a special place with the scumbags of history. But I digress. I am discussing our country.

What will it take for us to realise that we need to stand as one in order to solve the problems that we face as a nation? These obstacles ought to make us realise that we are not marching in the right direction. The people of this nation have a choice to make: Are we going to fold our arms and say it is all downhill from here or are we going to change the course of the nation? We have changed the course of history before; there is no reason to believe that it cannot be done again. In order for us to be a great nation we need to have obstacles. We will be overcome or we shall overcome. The choice is ours. Whether we want to be great or not is up to us.

We are a nation of different people who have forgotten that they have common goals. We want to see a prosperous South Africa, a nation we can be proud of. We all want to see the end of shacks, power cuts, crime and so forth. These are the basic goals we have as a nation. Unfortunately there is no one at the top to lead us towards that goal.

When people from the rest of Africa come to South Africa they see a land of opportunity and prosperity. There are groups from other continents who share the same sentiments about our country as these fellow Africans. Perhaps we ought to see what they see. Opportunity and endless possibility. Some of the most prosperous and mighty nations that have ever existed have dominated pages upon pages of history precisely because they embraced the foreigner. The Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians, even the Americans. The US has grown on the backs of immigrants.

We maybe different but we are one man.

Thus I have to point out that before I am Dlanga of the Madiba clan, a son of the Xhosa tribe, a South African or even an African — I am a human being. My humanness should and must take precedent over any thing that tempts me to identify myself as anything else. I belong to my fellow man. Thus every man is my responsibility. And that makes me every man’s responsibility. Yes, this is naïve talk to many. But I see it as what could be.

While today we see foreigners being killed and being driven out of their homes, tomorrow it maybe be Zulus or Xhosas or Tswanas or any of the other tribes in this country. The longer we allow it to fester, the worse our future will be. Many commentators have said that already. There is nothing new there.

We are one people joined together by the common struggles of our beloved continent. Many of these fellow Africans have fled their homes in their countries, now they have had to run from their homes in South Africa. They too, like us are hungry. The sooner we realise that there is more than enough to go around for everybody, the better.

I believe in a South Africa whose freedom was born out of the generosity of people’s of many nations.

I believe in a South Africa that does not return kindness with cruelty.

I believe in a South Africa that embraces all peoples. From all nations.

I believe in a South Africa that does not take advantage of the weak, those who have nowhere else to turn.

I believe in a South Africa that does not abuse the defenceless.

I believe in a South Africa that does not silence the voices of the voiceless.

I believe in a generous South Africa.

Understandably, one can say that all these things are nice and easy for me to say, especially since I have a nice job, a roof over my head and am assured to have at least three decent meals a day. But what about those people who have to struggle to survive? What about those who have to compete with cheap foreign labour? I am convinced that they too believe in the same South Africa that I believe in. Especially if we suddenly had to flee to the nations of the very people we have so ill-treated.

This country that I live in cannot be judged by the acts of a few. In fact, even if the majority was unkind, I would still urge people not to judge this nation by it’s majority, because even then, there would be a few good South Africans, and I would urge anyone to judge us by those few good ones. However, I know that is not necessary. The good far outnumber the bad.

There are far more sensible, generous South Africans than not.

This is why I refuse to be ashamed. I am a South African.

Why Do White South Africans Emigrate?

Excuse me while I blame apartheid

Many white people see no just cause in blacks blaming apartheid for anything. It ended almost 14 years already; get over it already, they say. Often it is said with indignation, if not irritation, as though to say, how dare they!

Those who insist we stop talking about it tell us it’s in the past, so we should forget about it. Perhaps it would be easy to forget if we didn’t bear the scars of the past. For some it’s not mere scars; some walk around with deep sores that are still healing — slowly. Every now and then, the sore is disturbed and the healing process is reversed.

It is easy for the “perpetrator” (I use that word liberally here) to say: “Forget about it,” because he does not want to be reminded of his sins. At the same time it is also too easy for the victim to keep playing the victim card instead of getting on with it. There is a middle ground somewhere between these conflicting feelings.

When we blame the legacy of apartheid, most white people take it as a personal attack on them for having benefited from the system. Or they accuse blacks of refusing to take responsibility for whatever is going wrong in the country. This is not the case. It is an attack on the system. We are not asking you to feel guilty. If anyone needs to get over anything, it is white people who walk around carrying guilt. This guilt might paralyse them, or even make them unwitting racists. Or, even worse, cause them to overcompensate, thus wiping away any sincerity in their efforts to balance the past.

To be honest, had I been white during the height of apartheid I don’t know if I would have had the moral fortitude to stand up against the National Party government. Perhaps I would have condemned it in the comfort and privacy of my mind.

The legacy of apartheid is very real. Let us not pretend that people don’t have a legitimate reason for blaming it for their current condition, as some excuse for their lack of progress. It is an undeniable fact that the vast majority of black people were denied a good education; some were even denied an education. The government of the day did not bother to build schools for them.

Where there is education, opportunity soon follows, and without it blacks were caught in a vicious cycle of stagnation. They saw no real progress for themselves. Instead of passing on wealth from generation to generation, their descendents inherited poverty and a very visible reality that they were not allowed to prosper in the land of their birth.

To dismiss these realities as mere laziness on the part of the black person is a clear lack of understanding of the position the formerly oppressed find themselves in today. The black person is still playing catch up.

We in the black community are lacking decent education, even with the new government. The teachers who teach most black students did not get a fantastic education themselves. With these steep hills to climb, it is a miracle that so many children who went through those schools have managed to extricate themselves from the web of hopelessness.

Jobless blacks in the townships and in the rural areas do not expect the government to do anything for them. What they want are opportunities so that they can improve their lives — not handouts. Many of them don’t see these opportunities, so they create some for themselves even in the bleak conditions in which find themselves. Young men create car-wash businesses and young women hair saloons, to name just the most obvious examples.

On the other hand, blacks look at white misbehaviour through the prism of race without seeing the core of the problem. When we only look at it that way, we don’t try to solve the issue.

The black community must not confuse with racism the young white man’s anger. He cannot understand why he has to be at the back of the queue when he seeks employment. Let’s say that he is too young even to remember apartheid. Shall we now punish him for benefiting from a system that was not of his choosing? Is it his fault that he just happened to have been born into it? Whether he would have grown up to be a perpetrator of the evils of the previous system or not is immaterial. What matters is that the system ended before he could be a conscious and active participant in it. What do we do now?

Having said all I have, I would like to point out that I am not as naive as to believe that racism does not exist. Sadly it is does. We saw manifestations of it recently at the University of the Free State.

Whether we admit it or not, we are all victims of apartheid. But we cannot be victims forever. We may have been victims, but we don’t have to think and act like them. The only way we can raise above it is when we first seek to understand. However, this must not excuse bad black or white behaviour.

White People Should Join The ANC

The judge in the Zuma case will need balls made of steel

Considering that this is my first post, I would rather be writing about something else, but I feel compelled to tackle the subject at hand — even though it goes against everything I am; my natural sense of optimism.

As I understand it, optimists are not oblivious to the realities of earthly existence and its bleakness. They are familiar with all shades of life, its darkness. Optimists know the darkness; they acknowledge it but they focus on the coming dawn. It may be too soon to be talking about this, even. Rarely is the question asked: Will the judge in the Zuma case be able to render a fair trial? Will the songs outside the courtroom intimidate the judge? I ask again, will the judge render a fair trial under these circumstances?

If the judge is anything like me, he will sit on his chair wearing an adult diaper mainly because of the following statement made by KwaZulu-Natal Cosatu leader Zet Luzipho: “This time there will be blood spilt in the courtroom” if Zuma goes on trial. That sounds a lot like intimidation, even if the statement was later withdrawn.

Words, unfortunately, can be troublesome; they cannot be erased once they roll off the tongue. They remain etched in memories, only to be recalled when it is convenient: “Remember when you said … ”

I wouldn’t want to be a judge in this trial, especially if the verdict ends up being “guilty”. Balls of King Kong made of stainless steel are required of this judge. Whoever he or she will be, I wish him or her balls by the truckload.

Let me point out that after Luzipho’s outburst, Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven later said: “Cosatu fully supports an independent judiciary and shares the judges’ fears that it is under threat.”

“We believe, however, that they should not be criticising Cosatu, but [rather] the people who are manipulating the judicial system for their own political ends,” he also said. “The trial against Zuma is a politically motivated exercise … and he has been subjected to trial by public opinion for the past seven years.

“We have been convinced for some time that he will not get a fair trial … workers will not allow the NPA [National Prosecuting Authority] and whoever is handling them to abuse its power in this matter.”

Why is Cosatu so concerned about the abuse of power? Why have the workers allowed the NPA to abuse its power in regard to Schabir Shaik since Zuma’s fate is potentially tied to his?

Thanks to what some people have said, we all know what could happen if Zuma is found guilty. We imagine it, then quickly brush those silly thoughts aside. This country is stronger than that, we tell ourselves. Our democracy can handle it, we tell ourselves. Yet deep down we are not so sure. We live in fear of what could happen. We fear its shape because we don’t know what form it will take. We fear its size because we don’t know how big or small it will be.

Will we be able to fight the Day of the Monster if it visits us? We’d hoped we’d escaped it in 1994. But that very same year Rwanda did not escape its monster. Zimbabwe is in the grips of its dragon. Kenya is wrestling its beast. What will we do if the day comes for us? Will we put it back in its cave like we did in 1994 or will we let it loose?

It all depends on what we do on the day of the verdict. If Zuma is found guilty, will we all accept it? If he is innocent, will we all accept it? All nations have a dark side; every now and then we are called upon to deal with it. What will we do when that time comes? Will we tell it to crawl back to the hole it come from or will we let it take over?

Many have made up their minds about the innocence or the guilt of a man before he has had his day in court. Perhaps those who have judged him guilty cannot see how Shaik can be guilty and Zuma innocent. For them it is as if to say the right side of one’s body is innocent and the left is guilty. It just sounds absurd.

If he is found innocent, those who said there would be no fair trial will be the first to hail our judiciary, as happened after the rape case. The problem with justice is that it is only seen to be done when it suits the victor.

It is a sad state of affairs that some people still call him a rapist even though he was acquitted. When one is pronounced innocent when one is indeed innocent, the verdict is not accepted with joy; rather with relief and anger. And for the guilty, nothing is as unfair as being found guilty when one is indeed guilty.

Let us hope that the judge who gets to try the case will not be afraid of the defendant, the ANC, the screaming hordes outside the courtroom that will be singing Umshini Wami, or those who want him to rot in jail. If Zuma is innocent, then Shaik must be innocent. Unless justice means who has the better lawyer, then justice is not just.