Dignified Sisulu wants to lead the party by example
On her special day, two of the biggest choirs in SA united on stage, delivering harmonic compositions of a careful selection of struggle songs and hymns. ANC members filled the doorways and passages at the historic Uncle Tom’s hall in Orlando West, Soweto, as a pastor read from the Bible: “Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.”
They had gathered to celebrate the legacy of ANC stalwart and Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, who was being honoured for her contribution to the country by the ANC Youth League in Soweto.
The pastor’s reading set the tone for the rest of the proceedings. Young people called for honourable leadership to get the ANC out of the “dark fog” that had engulfed it. Sisulu smiled warmly, nodding occasionally so as to acknowledge the pleas.
The stage was set by local leaders, who spoke fondly and with gravitas about the Sisulu name and the work the family had done in Soweto and across the country.
Some stopped short of endorsing her for the highest office, it seemed, only because protocol did not allow it.
But in song, they made their wishes known as they belted out “sikhokhele Lindiwe” (lead us, Lindiwe), backed up by the Grammy award-winning Soweto Gospel Choir and the Imilonji Kantu Choral Society.
Sisulu is touted as a potential candidate in the ANC’s succession race ahead of the governing party’s elective conference in December.
Others who have been given the nod by the different slates in the ANC include Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and former AU Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
While Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma seem to have hit the ground running with their campaigns, criss-crossing the country addressing ANC meetings, Sisulu has been reluctant to step into the spotlight. When the moment arrived for her to take to the podium at Uncle Tom’s hall a fortnight ago, she sprung up so energetically that the MC had to ask her to slow down so she could be ushered on with a song.
Sisulu was overcome with emotion. Looking at the colourfully clad members of the two choirs, she said her late brother, Zwelakhe, had been passionate about music and would have been proud to see them perform together.
She spoke about the significance of music in her family’s life and reminisced about Orlando West, saying being back “home” filled her with hope. She was done with her speech four minutes later, and danced her way back to her chair.
Her reluctance to broach the subject of succession, or to even subtly throw her hat into the ring, was because it is time to do things differently, she says in an interview later.
“I am very reluctant because it goes against the grain of what we agreed to do. What we agreed to is the way that we ourselves should lead by example. We can’t say something and go and do something else at the side, how do our people have faith in us when we do that?” Sisulu asks.
There are only three weeks left before the policy conference, and it will be open season for all after that. She has decided that she will show her hand only then, even if that makes her seem as though she lacks strategy.
“I could be strategic like all of them, but how will I feel about this ANC whose dignity, ethos and ethics we want to restore? How will I be able to stand up and say ‘this is what the ANC stands for’, if — when it is suitable for me — I take the shortest route possible? It is wrong.”
She says those campaigning prior to the official launch of the nominations season in the ANC ought to introspect.
“I think that they need to find out from themselves if their ethical conscience is driving them that way .... We did that too in 2007 and it just didn’t work for us. We had a split in the ANC between those people that felt extremely disgruntled and we lost some of our people, and an organisation that has a rich history like ours should not experience that.”
The scars of the 2007 conference in Polokwane that Sisulu refers to were the reason behind the ANC’s losses during the recent local government elections, according to Sisulu. She says the ANC had been too preoccupied during the campaign with the wrong trajectory of slates and factions.
“Each of us has been so focused with what we are doing, so we may have lost touch with our people and it became clear in the elections that there is a message that they are sending and we are trying to rectify that mistake.”
Sisulu is certain that the ANC will rise from the ashes. Although some leading voices in the social discourse such as former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo believe the ANC needs to be challenged at the polls before it fixes itself, she is convinced the party’s corrective and apologetic conversations with supporters are enough.
Sisulu says she does not despair about the destructive environment in the ANC because the party will stay in power as long as it has the support of young people like those who honoured her in Soweto.
“We are in a space where people out there might be losing hope in us and our job is to go out there and reassure them that there might be situations where [we] go through dark times, but they do not last,” she says.
“Like day and night, there will be light and there will be darkness and the whole range of things that have been happening over the past few months have given people a negativity towards the ANC … we are working on it.”
She says many within the ANC, like her, are working hard to revive it. The governing party still has to get to the bottom of the rot caused by the alleged capture of the state by the Gupta family, among other blunders by its deployees in government.
Sisulu supports calls for a commission of inquiry into state capture because the allegations made over the past year warrant investigation.
“I think it is only logical that there is a commission of inquiry into state capture because it is taken by society as a given. It helps us as an organisation clear up whether this is true or not; it helps people who are also accused clear their names,” she says.
That’s not a bad ticket to campaign on — deal with the concerns of the members of the ANC without attacking other party leaders.