Icy wind of Stalin’s personality cult

IN THE midst of serious political challenges facing the ANC and the country – and the concomitant calls for President Jacob Zuma to step down both as president of the country and the ANC – some have decided to police our views instead of advancing cogent arguments in their support of President Zuma.

With no regard for the deteriorating socio-economic and political reality as a result of the Zuma personality cult, these individuals repeatedly recite a tired monotonous narrative: the president was elected by the ANC national conference and he will be removed by the same conference.

This statement is presented as a final administrative order, as if the ANC has now become an administrative NGO that is only to wait for periodic conferences before it can act on fundamental political challenges we face.

ANC constitutional clauses are bandied about to frustrate those who raise their concerns regarding the damage wrought by the president to the country and the ANC. Indeed, the overall political challenges faced by the ANC are now reduced to constitutional prescripts instead of looking for political solutions.

In an idiotic scramble to defend an individual, ANC politics are relegated to the back burner.

We have long ceased to engage and analyse social phenomena from a political-class perspective.

But the fact is, the controversy surrounding President Zuma has serious political ramifications – for both the country and the ANC.

It should be approached from a political standpoint.

The administrative arguments using ANC constitutional prescripts not only deepen the problem, but strip the very same ANC constitution of its revolutionary content and relevance.

For instance, the view that President Zuma represents a particular political tendency – a personality cult – cannot find space for political interrogation in the ANC. This is because many of those vocal in his defence shoot down any such discussions out of blind loyalty. The cult has turned them into useful parts of machinery that act in a predetermined way in its service.

They have become the willing political prisoners of the cult, both forsaking and stripped of their basic right to the freedoms other South Africans enjoy.

Within that machinery the freedom of speech and the right to hold a political view are alien concepts – the behaviours of “neoliberals”. The political dogmas of the previous era remain in place with little regard for the fast-changing political scenario of today’s South Africa.

From that machine the changing face of electoral politics is viewed as “an imperialist plot”, one to “weaken the liberation movements of Africa”.

The demographic realities of an increasingly youthful continent are overlooked. Political protest by the youth is defined as the sponsored agenda of Western and other world powers.

That is the extent of the toxicity of our body politic.

It is in such context that it is however, important to salute those few courageous liberation struggle veterans who have decided to stand up for the sake of our country and the ANC.

Astonishingly many of these heroes of the liberation struggle still live in fear of the iron fist of Mbokodo, the erstwhile ANC security department in exile.

Even the mention of Mbokodo evokes discernable fear among some. In their experience Mbokodo knew everything they said and did. In fact, Mbokodo was on their doorstep.

It is not entirely unlike the political atmosphere in which we find ourselves today. The bright stars of our liberation struggle have been content to rather be treated as political antiques.

As a result rogue elements and the by-products of the revolution are in charge and full of passionate intensity, dictating the form, content and pace of our political struggle.

This is to serve the interests of their cult. The people’s plight has been usurped and is now necessary rhetoric for legitimising the interests and pursuits of the cult.

Put differently, the interests of the cult are now presented as the interests of the masses.

That is why, at this point, it is apt to remember what Nikita Khrushchev said in his secret speech delivered in February 1956 at a Communist Party congress in the Soviet Union. In it Khrushchev berated the fatal consequences of the phenomenon of personality cult of Joseph Stalin.

With a heart heavy with regret he pointed out the dangers of failing to confront the cult when the phenomenon began to rear its head.

Khrushchev gave examples of countless party cadres and veterans who had been subjected to trumped-up charges, imprisoned, tortured and callously murdered in a paranoid defence of the cult.

Painfully, we now begin to see similarities of the Stalinist era in our own country today.

Comrades have been subjected to trumped-up charges for daring to question certain deals. These tested cadres of the liberation struggle have been hounded to court and forced to spend their last cents in legal fees in their defence. Their lives have been permanently scarred by shock, trauma and having to adjust to unemployment.

The star performers of our deployees like Vusi Pikoli have had to find jobs in DA-run governments because the cult will have nothing to do with them.

Their professional and personal lives have been thrown into disarray as they endeavour to protect their integrity.

This is because their organisation, the ANC, has sacrificed and abandoned them in the service of the cult.

So before you argue that the sum total of the ANC’s and country’s problems are not about the Zuma cult please think of the cadres who have suffered in its hands. Remember too, the losses the ANC suffered in the major metros – also a result of the presence of this cult.

Do yourself another favour and consider our bleak economic situation and the possible downgrades as a result of the political and economic havoc that has been caused.

Consider too the possible loss of power by the ANC in 2019.

Above all, I urge you to recall the very famous words of Martin Niemoller: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist.

“Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist.

“Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

“Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.’’

Mzukisi Makatse is an ANC member. He writes in his personal capacity