Men of Mandela’s calibre difficult to find in the ANC of today
IT’s been three years since Nelson Mandela died.
Back then we still knew our north star as South Africans and South Africa was not as bad then, even though the signs in the Jacob Zuma presidency were beginning to show us that we were heading downhill.
Madiba’s death marked the end of an euphoric era in which black and white shared the same spaces, transcended a divisive past emotionally more than systematically and put the country on a firm foundation to deal with the systematic challenges that a democratic dispensation demands.
Now with challenges of Nkandla, #FeesMustFall and a stagnant economy, it’s difficult not to crave the leadership calibre of Madiba for our contemporary challenges.
In commemorating Mandela’s death, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa said, “Does our movement have such leaders? Are we living up to the example that Madiba, [Oliver] Tambo, [Walter] Sisulu and [Albert] Luthuli set?”
The answer to his question is a big fat no. The ANC has truly lost the plot and is simply handing its moral legacy to the official opposition party.
Justice Malala put it eloquently in one of his columns when he wrote, “The future now looks blue . . . the future now looks red” after the ANC NEC decided to retain Zuma after its deliberations of whether to recall him.
This decision simply stamped how far from Madiba’s leadership the ANC had swayed. Madiba had no problem as president in recalling his own co-revolutionary and then ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
Recalling Zuma should be as easy if the party was still rooted in the leadership values of its previous giants such as Madiba despite Madiba and others being of a previous era rather than the contemporary era South Africa is navigating.
“Now more than ever, we need leaders of his [Mandela’s] quality and integrity, leaders who are committed to serve only the interests of the people. We have to ask ourselves uncomfortable questions such as ‘Does South Africa today have such leaders?’ ” asked Ramaphosa.
If it does, they clearly do not seem to be evident in the ANC, including Ramaphosa himself. I digress but Ramaphosa stands in a prime position to embody Madiba’s values for our contemporary challenges but he is clearly not taking the opportunity. Not only was he crucial in negotiating our democratic dispensation, he is reputed to have been Madiba’s choice to be deputy president before the party chose Thabo Mbeki. He has trade union roots and business experience, but all he has become is Zuma’s stooge rather than portraying the kind of president he would be.
His credentials during Madiba’s era are simply not enough. South Africans need to have the type of president for today’s times, not a bygone era. And as much as Madiba is loved worldwide, he does represent an era that is fading and in which he led under trying times.
Not the same can be said of the Zuma era. When one compares the leadership of Zuma and Madiba, it’s clear that such leaders of the calibre of Madiba have become lost to the ruling party.
Madiba, despite being a popular figure, was not driven by populism and understood what leadership entailed.
Not the same can be said of Zuma. Not the same can be said of the ruling party.
And that is simply because it is refusing to embody the leadership standards of Madiba, albeit in a contemporary South Africa. The party is on a path of fading in the collective consciousness as Madiba’s time was.
It is unbelievably sad.