ANC acts out role of democracy
HOT TOPIC: Call for Zuma to go
IN the city of Rome stand the ruins of the Circus Maximus, an arena where crowds of up to 100 000 once thronged to see brutal entertainment featuring gladiators and charioteers.
The Roman public was both shocked and mesmerised by those gory events.
The ANC under Jacob Zuma is our version of such an ancient spectacle.
It seems so bizarre as to be a kind of entertainment rather than reality, yet the chilling truth is that it is all too real, reshaping our country and affecting the lives of millions.
Like the Circus Maximus, the ANC government is a form of theatre.
It acts out the role of a democracy, but everyone knows this make-believe is both a farce and a tragedy.
For the ANC, democracy is simply a convenient word which it redefines constantly to suit its shameless justification of base actions.
In days to come we will continue to hear secretary-general Gwede Mantashe’s tortuous explanations of ANC positions, above all why his master, Zuma, must see out his full term until 2019.
Real democracy, for which Nelson Mandela fought, doesn’t have much to do with the sleazy conduct of our present government, which, according to the SA Council of Churches, has not only lost its moral compass and legitimacy, but is guilty of “systematic patterns” of wrongdoing via a power elite which systematically loots state assets.
Government bureaucracy and some degree of corruption will never be entirely eliminated, but it can be minimised and certainly prevented from reaching the epic scale that has characterised the ANC’s rule.
To reverse the damage that has been done, a massive cleansing of our whole state apparatus is needed.
While there are now voices raised against Zuma from within the ANC itself, it is absurd to think that only he should be in the dock, and that if and when he goes all will be well.
The sickness of the ANC government is far bigger, wider and deeper than Zuma.
There is every sign that unless a true political rebirth takes place, a post-Zuma ANC will bring us just more of the same.
The signs are already there in the form of vague assurances from presidential hopefuls whose detailed policies, so the story goes, are only for ANC eyes behind closed doors.
At the same time, no reasonable person believes that the entire ANC shares Zuma’s cynical view of democracy.
It is widely recognised, at least since the Greek philosopher Aristotle, that weakness of will plays a role in human action, when we know what should be done but cannot summon up the spine to do it.
There are no doubt many in the ANC who have propped Zuma up in the hope that at some point he would become a genuine leader, but these supporters are running out of time fast.
If they are not to forfeit what moral credibility they retain they must work together urgently to recreate the ANC along lines worthy of Mandela’s legacy.
Why they haven’t yet done so is a mystery for psychologists and psychiatrists.
People can align themselves with corruption for many reasons: not only patronage but also convenient forgetfulness, irrational suppositions, confusion of fact with fantasy, misguided loyalty.
Few things generate a sense of self-esteem more effectively than a willingness to be a faithful follower.
The trouble is that all these psychological explanations tend to ignore the most pressing factor of all: the existence of evil attitudes and acts.
Our secular society has become afraid to denounce evil even when it is in front of our noses.
Evil is a religious concept, but it describes a reality as undeniable as the sun that rises every morning.
We all know and smell evil when we encounter it, but in an irreligious age it has become unfashionable to call it by its name, especially when it belongs not to a conveniently remote past but to the here and now in which we live.
Nobody is afraid to call the old apartheid system evil, which it was, but who in the ANC has the courage to apply the same word to what Zuma and his gang have done, and stand for? Not only individuals have souls. Corporations, governments and civil movements have souls too: identities greater than all their parts, which, when evil, can stifle morality in individuals in ways which find a ready analogy in the spiritual idea of possession.
In this sense there are good people within the ANC who have been possessed by a corrupt political culture from which they must free themselves before it is too late.
It’s with good reason that I’ve suggested a parallel between the apartheid and Zuma regimes.
We are indeed back in pre-1994 days, governed by a short-sighted political clique who, left alone, would take our country to ruin.
We need a new government that does not simply administer or rule, but truly governs for the common good.
Andrew Tainton, Port Elizabeth