Daily Dispatch
Problems bigger than one man
SPEAKING on opposition politics at a Daily Dispatch and University of Fort Hare dialogue in East London on Wednesday night, Mmusi Maimane, the leader of the DA, made an important point – that the problems of South Africa are far greater than the person of President Jacob Zuma.
It may seem like a fairly elementary point, but it is actually a signboard that points towards the more fundamental weaknesses besetting both the ANC and the nation.
And perhaps there is some irony in the fact that it is Zuma himself who we have to thank more than any other for so consistently exposing the potentially fatal flaws that exist in the ANC and in South Africa’s constitution.
That it is not simply Zuma but the ANC that lacks a moral compass is nothing new.
This was evident from the moment that such an obviously tainted man was chosen to lead the organisation in 2007.
But the extent to which his moral lack has spread throughout the ANC was never more clear than on Tuesday when the ANC’s national executive committee opted to support his steadfast decimation of the ANC and the country.
The important point here is that no progressive political organisation that exists in a modern democratic dispensation should find itself depending entirely on the moral whims or inclinations of a handful of individuals in order to keep itself upright.
What the absence of a moral backbone in the ANC reveals is the presence of a more fundamental problem – design flaws within the structure of the organisation.
The real trouble with the ANC is that it is trapped in its own system – it operates on slates, it is disproportionately weighted, it lacks sufficient and direct accountability internally and it is extremely vulnerable to manipulation.
This is why it is possible for 86 people to be so elevated that they are able to ignore the roar of deep and bitter dissent within their own splintering organisation.
Not only that, but to turn a blind eye to the erosion of the nation’s constitutional architecture – a constitution created largely by the ANC’s own hand. And then to disregard the immense damage that all of this is causing to the nation.
That such a small group – which includes individuals who are deeply compromised themselves – can effectively hold the entire ANC and the nation hostage is clear evidence that the ANC has failed to evolve into a modern organisation that is in step with the spirit of the nation’s constitutional democracy.
This was underlined on Tuesday by the secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, when he spouted agonisingly arcane rhetoric in an attempt to obscure the fact that the systems of both the ANC and the country have been manipulated horrendously by one man and his cronies.
The flaws in the nation’s constitution have also yawned wide in the Zuma years.
Most recently Zuma has alerted us to the problem of allowing the president, on his own, to select and appoint the head of an institution as crucial as the National Prosecuting Authority. This is but one of the fundamental challenges posed to the country – all of which will long outlast Zuma if the citizens of South Africa allow it.