View past through apt lens

COMPROMISE and radicalism are not mutually opposed – the question of time is involved.

Prominent among the events of April was the passing on of Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela or “Mam’ Winnie” as she was popularly referred to after her death.

What can we learn from this event? Before I draw a lesson, let me briefly note that, like all of us, she was human and had weaknesses and unique personality traits, some of which contributed to the divorce from her husband Nelson Mandela.

In the same breath, I affirm resolutely that she was a strong character who withstood deliberate, planned attempts by the apartheid government to stop her from being the torch of hope for the liberation of the oppressed majority.

What I learnt from the events prior to and during her burial is that time plays a big role in addressing issues. Things not conceivable yesterday, or which could only be spoken of or done in a tentative, moderate way, can, with the passage of time be spoken of today in a radical way because of yesterday’s moderate efforts to lay the foundation.

So instead of lambasting the leaders of yesterday as “sell-outs” for achieving the negotiated political settlement, rather appreciate them for what they did at the time to save the country from destruction. Instead of antagonism towards yesterday’s leaders, this generation should ask itself how it will take things forward in a more radical and workable way than yesterday, because time allows for this today.

The tendency to condemn leaders of the past played out at Madikizela-Mandela’s burial. Most praise for “Mama”, especially from radicals, came with a view that all other leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were moderates or even “cowering sellouts” who compromised the cause of the oppressed while she was a lone voice calling for radical change. While it is easier and even fashionable today to call for radical change, it was not so in the early 1990s. The minority government was strong and the world ambivalent in its support for change.

Politics had to be played and a negotiated settlement reached if this country was not to go up in flames. In 1990 there were people who saw racially based inequalities as normal. They were prepared to fight and destroy SA to keep things as they were, and they had outside support.

Thanks to time, those who opposed radical change are now realising the status quo could not and cannot remain the same. Times have changed.

We can raise issues today without too much fear of the country being destroyed civilly and economically. It is disingenuous and politically opportunistic to condemn the well-meant solutions of the past determined by their own circumstances by today’s circumstances.

Some of those who demonise the leaders of the past as “sell-outs” lead parties that are in coalition with other parties which in normal circumstances they would not cooperate with because of mutually opposed ideologies. They cooperate because pragmatism demands it. Yet on public platforms these leaders lambast the leaders of the past who in their circumstances could not find an ideal, perfect and radical solution and so settled for what was practically achievable at the time.

Theirs was not the season to call for radical solutions because they would not have worked.

Let us be grateful to the leaders of the past who may have negotiated less than perfect solutions but, in doing so, laid the foundation for us today to call for more just solutions because our time now allows it – because (the time has come). — Sithembele Sipuka, Bishop of Mthatha