Bicycle kicks, own goals and the ANC

With his team trailing 1-0 in the 96th minute of their Premier Soccer League match against Orlando Pirates, Oscarine Masuluke, goalkeeper for Baroka FC, scored with a spectacular bicycle kick to level his team with the Soweto giants. And though his team eked a point from the game, his kick went on to dominate social media for hours afterwards. It’s the kind of David versus Goliath moment that is the stuff of Hollywood sports films.

And if we’re going to be philosophical about it, because this is the Mail & Guardian after all, then that one goal is exactly the kind of motivation we need to see because the ANC has certainly shown little inclination for heroic efforts in stoppage time. When Minister of Tourism Derek Hanekom last weekend bravely stood in front of the party’s national executive committee (NEC) to present a motion calling on the president to resign, it was a relief to see that some in the ANC understand that the party must do something now to save itself from ruin at the next election.

It was a curious move from Hanekom. He’s quiet and unassuming and, as he told us this week, he just wants to talk about tourism. Like Masuluke, he is an unlikely goal scorer.

But there was no spectacular bicycle kick at the St George Hotel near Pretoria where the meeting was held. The whistle was blown before the corner could even be taken. Caught between establishing a long-term survival strategy and a short-term plan to keep President Jacob Zuma safe from the long arm of the law, the ANC chose Zuma. The party claims it chose unity but what the ANC has chosen is the protection of the president until 2019. And it has chosen to do so knowing full well the costs it may yet incur. So it’s clear that it’s not just Zuma that’s the problem here. Beneath the clamour for the president’s resignation, there are sound reasons to question his leadership on matters far beyond state capture. As an example, nine years ago, the South African Schools Act was amended. The key addition was section 5, which mandated the minister of education to develop and prescribe a set of “minimum uniform norms and standards” for schools, relating in particular to infrastructure, the number of pupils to be admitted and “the provision of learning and teaching support materials”. Infrastructure includes the basics of classrooms, electricity and sanitation, as well as such essential but often neglected services such as libraries, science laboratories, sport facilities, electronic connectivity and security.

Without the legal requirement to aim for such standards at schools, there can be no accountability upwards (by the minister) or downwards (by parents and children). Education departments don’t necessarily know what to spend their infrastructure budgets on, or what their goals should be, and many provincial departments underspend those budgets. For example, the Eastern Cape department planned to build 24 new schools in the current financial year; it has built three.

The difficulties we face right now are not just about Zuma but also about the leadership of the ANC. Four years ago, the nongovernmental organisation Equal Education launched a court case to compel the minister of education to prescribe the minimum norms and standards for schools, as the Act directed. A document giving guidelines appeared but it was thought to be inadequate, even by the state’s own standards. It lacked detail and provided little hard information (such as which schools had no toilets) that would enable a clear understanding of what would be required to improve schooling conditions — a vital task, given that so many schools are operating in desperate conditions. Some, in fact, have no classrooms to speak of.

More hard work was required by Equal Education, and others, to push the state to answer to the socioeconomic rights due to its citizens. The eventual result was a commitment to the implementation of the norms and standards, with basic amenities to be supplied within three years (and schools not built of brick to be replaced within the same timeframe), electronic connectivity and proper security within seven years, and libraries and labs to be provided within 10 years.

That first deadline passed this week. The department released a progress report that shows some progress but not nearly enough. Most provinces missed the deadline, some by a long way. The failure of the ANC-led government to fulfil the promise of the Freedom Charter to open the doors of learning to all has already been a disaster for the future of millions of South Africans. If it has to be whipped into action by the law, then so be it.

The ANC’s integrity committee quizzes the president on Friday and last week we applauded the party for using its internal processes to bring its leader to account. But, if events at the party’s NEC meeting are anything to go by, the prospect of the president facing any action remains slim.

Zuma is here to stay, and his survival is not just pinned to the end of his second term as president, it determines as well who comes next.

Who indeed will still shield Zuma?