Questioning old habits

HUMAN beings are creatures of habit. Often, we do things simply because it is what our parents did. There are a number of stories to illustrate the point.

One tells of a young bride who was keen to cook her newly-wed husband a roast. She followed her mother’s recipe and, like her mother did, cut off the ends of the meat before putting it into the pan.

The husband thought the meat was delicious, but questioned why she had cut off the ends, which, in his opinion, were the best parts. She responded that it was the way her mother did it.

A few weeks later the couple were dining with the girl’s mum, who decided to do the same roast. She, too, trimmed off the end of the meat. When questioned, she responded it was what her mother did.

Thankfully, the young bride’s grandmother was still alive and a call was made to her to establish whether cutting the end bit of the meat made it tastier.

Grandma’s response was: “Darling, that was the only way it would fit in the pan.”

The point is that all too often we follow tradition blindly. The ANC is no different.

The organisation, which is well over a century old, has a few traditions of its own. One of them is that the deputy president of the organisation becomes the president.

It was this tradition that played a big part in Jacob Zuma becoming president of the party and, subsequently, president of the Republic.

But, that tradition is being questioned. The man leading the charge is Sihle Zikalala, the leader of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal.

Zikalala is a relatively young man. But he has emerged as a leading voice in the organisation.

This weekend Zikalala and his ANC provincial colleagues in the party made it clear they rejected this tradition.

“As the KZN ANC, we do not subscribe to the notion that the election of a deputy president implies that that comrade is automatically ordained to be successor to the incumbent. If it was so, there would be no need for elections.”

He added that a future president of the party should be chosen on the qualities they possessed, and not the position they held in the party.

Zikalala’s perspective may be shaped by the fact that, in KZN, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma seems to enjoy more support than the party’s current deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa.

But even if this is the case, his logic is sound. If we are to move forward, we have to constantly question what we do and why we do it. The mere fact that something was done in the past is no longer good enough.