Political madness keeps faith with defective leaders
Asense of political madness is gripping electorates in many western countries. In Britain, supporters of Jeremy Corbyn genuinely believe that plunging the UK into a Venezuelan state model incorporating all the antiSemitic antagonism of pre-World War 2 Nazi Germany will abolish the class system and reinvent equality.
On the side, there are supporters of Theresa May who genuinely believe she is a good prime minister and is capable of negotiating with the unelected, authoritarian EU.
In New Zealand and Canada, an obsession with fashionable symbolism and social justice inhabits the vain executive and its supporters, designed to make certain quarters feel awful about themselves. The equivalent political madness in SA is the belief that people such as Ace Magashule, Dudu Myeni, Meokgo Matuba and Supra Mahumapelo are good leaders, and therefore good people with matching intentions.
Disabusing the electorate is a challenge more immediate than land reform, free health care and free education.
That second week of December 2015 will be remembered for the unmasking of who Jacob Zuma really was, what he believed in and what he wanted. This passage of time also exposed his foot soldiers, a type of universally reviled individual who, although not unique (especially to left-wing governments), expresses a conviction in the perversion of law to their own economic ends, persistently claiming to act in the interests of democracy and the poor.
Those same people who featured then still do. Superficial consequences (ministerial and parastatal executive sackings) have emboldened them — some have even been promoted — which explains the impunity of that extraordinary recent meeting in a hotel in Durban, and the casual threat of deat in a meme that followed from Matuba to a reporter.
They enjoy support. From university campuses to the destitute rural provinces to the civil service, some media and internet forums. There is a clear endorsement for their beliefs, irrespective of their associations and documented lies. Because the beliefs themselves are so utterly vacuous and patently criminal, this endorsement is stimulated exclusively by sweeping racial rhetoric applied when scrutiny intensifies.
For example, Magashule’s expression of hatred for white people, articulated shortly after being caught plotting at the hotel, is the very — and possibly only — thing that keeps him there. But these rotten individuals also know that temptation is nearer than justice, that the ANC is loath to prosecute its own and that even death doesn’t judge indiscretion particularly harshly (Joe Modise, for instance).
Unfortunately, eliminating this kind of madness could take a generation given the pedestrian course of the ANC. As an idea, it could be disguised by an accompanying radical shift in economic policy, but the party would also have to sacrifice its own concept of unity that it loves perpetuating
— putting to hell the idea that rehabilitation is possible among its defective cadres.
If it really wanted to, the ANC could do this. It is not like certain countries in Europe where entire groups of liberals or greens are clinging to decomposing ideas from the Frankfurt School. These people rank few in number and have made, outside of racial agitation, precisely zero contribution to the political environment.
Political maturity in SA has yet to peak and the ANC could, and should, change, particularly in the face of this specific threat.
The risks of engaging the support bases of Magashule and his co-conspirators are significantly less than those these menaces present. The ANC could start by committing to destroying the legacy of Zuma’s economic infractions.