ANC meets in a world engulfed by greed
For nearly all of 2017, every economic analysis and review or rating of our country has carried with it a very consistent caveat: everything depends on what happens at the ANC conference in December. Well, here we are. Thousands of ANC delegates are meeting to elect a leadership team that will take their party, and by extension all of our country, forward. Well, at least that is the hope. As we come to learn, it does not always follow that new leadership is necessarily progressive leadership.
While many have already selected who they wish would lead the party, I have a different wish. I wish mostly for an orderly ANC conference that ends with a winner who is accepted by all, and the real work of getting our country back on track starts.
In years gone by, I have often wondered just how much running of the country President Jacob Zuma actually does. With all the court cases, legal challenges and scandals, when does our poor president find time to be CEO of South Africa Inc?
I concluded that he is either an extremely industrious leader or we are on autopilot; perhaps the system is built so well that the thing just runs itself.
Well, as we have learnt recently, the thing does not run itself.
When those responsible are not doing their jobs, others take over and loot. Or perhaps the scary converse is true — those responsible intentionally don’t do their jobs, so that they and their friends can loot.
Which brings me to the very intellectual and almost “pie in the sky” conversations I have been hearing and reading about in relation to this conference. We are all engaged in very deep conversations, analysing who would be the best people to lead the ANC and why.
We, the so-called enlightened and educated, do this because we believe it is the only conceivable reason anyone should be bestowed with a leadership role. Why would you want someone to lead you unless they qualify as the best person for the job, we reason.
Unfortunately, all that does not matter. The world of ideals is no more. Values in leadership seem to now be a romantic, distant memory. We live in a world consumed by self-interest and greed.
It seems nobody cares about the best person to serve as a leader. Everybody cares about what the leader can do for them. Hence the very unhealthy popularity of slates — a practice that is not in the tradition of the ANC but in only a few years has been entrenched as practice.
Not only do slates undermine the power that is meant to rest with the branches, it creates a “winner takes all” mechanism that guarantees that whoever wins, division within the party will continue to consume it.
However, even the rise of the slates is a proxy for a bigger problem that has infiltrated our leaders the world over, whether in politics or business. Greed.
Greed is defined as an “intense and selfish desire for something” often at the exclusion of another.
The popularity of US President Donald Trump was driven by this very trait. The American voter wanted to be “great again” — on their own. This is why President Trump can go against every UN decision on the Middle East and unilaterally declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel and sow further and very dangerous divisions between Israel and Palestine. Why? Because he can.
It is the same selfish desire that would drive Markus Jooste and his colleagues at Steinhoff to intentionally mislead and misrepresent their financial position so that the company could continue to report favourable results and they could continue to earn fat bonuses and cash in well-priced share options. All based on a lie. Why? Because they can.
In the ANC, this greed has seen brother turn against brother and kill just so that someone doesn’t go to conference and vote in a way that could threaten another’s commercial interest. Families have lost breadwinners, fathers and brothers for this conference and its decisions. Why? Greed.
May we have a peaceful conference that comes to a decision that is accepted by all. No winner should take all. Let us learn from mistakes of the past.
Everyone cares about what the leader can do for them