Use policies, not slander, to woo voters
SOME modern-day politicians have great ideas that appeal to African nationalists and socialists alike, but their only limitation is to think that slander is the best political strategy.
I selectively embrace a lot of these ideas from the new generation of moderate and radical elements with a great sense of optimism. But the dampener slips in once they start assassinating the characters of other parties and leaders without any effort to table alternative policies, yes “policies”, and not destructive rhetoric against people of their own social class.
Simply put, destroy others, including your own kin, to get to the top.
Let us remain critical, “brutally frank” and robust, but being politically developed shows when methods are sound and smartly crafted to engage those of your own class who may only differ with you on political approaches to national issues.
During the early days of our democracy, we had far fewer parties and/or political phenomena than today.
That deepened my belief that with time we would live to see fewer political parties and trade unions towards the second phase to achieve total liberation, namely, the struggle for fundamental economic transformation.
Today, we witness unprecedented political and ideological laziness by most political formations. They seek to achieve popularity using the revered names of our icons and martyrs such as Nkrumah, Nyerere, Tambo, Mandela, Biko, Sobukwe, Tiro, Slovo and Hani, just to mention a few, instead of setting up clearer political systems, strategies and programmes.
I ponder what their political roles would look like should those whose political purpose they so depend on cease to exist in our national political landscape.
Most were born out of the mother of all political ruptures, the Polokwane disaster, and others sprang out of subsequent crises from that watershed political moment in our country.
More parties and trade unions emerged with the strangest of political cultures and traditions, and by admission they migrated to their new formations and/or political homes with what seemed to be a “salad dish of contradicting revolutionary theories”, if not a “collage of political imaginations and/or fantasies” from their original multi-class source of political nurturing.
Not all sought to reform what was left of the ANC and its multi-class African nationalist outlook. Some attempted to be different and chose some Fanonist ideas and blended them with Bakuninist political discipline and added a rather half-baked Stalin centralist political method.
These are bound to implode under our political climate. Our people may still be vulnerable in the eyes of naive politicians, but they are sceptical of hollow, populist, ideological rhetoric under present political conditions.
No amount of slander against others will dissuade them from their calls for a total overhaul of the current structure of our economy, equitable redistribution of wealth and fundamental transformation of their structures of government.
They no longer need reforms, they want transformation. So present alternative policies, political systems, structures and transformative programmes. Re a lekopa hhle!