LOSE YOUR ILLUSIONS
The ANC is living in a make-believe world of uncertainty, ineffectuality and unaccountability, in which it’s both a hapless victim of circumstance and worthy of being in charge. It’s neither
hilosopher, communist and ANC national chair Gwede Mantashe said the following as part of the ANC’s 110th anniversary celebrations: “Once upon a time, I, Gwede, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
It’s a poignant insight into the life of an ANC politician: a place of uncertainty and ineffectuality, but luckily also a place of uncertainty’s fortunate partner, unaccountability. Many of the people sitting in the rarefied atmosphere at the top of the ANC’s upper echelon are philosopher manqués, deeply abstruse thinkers who understand the world very, very differently to you and I.
What Mantashe really said — yes, the butterfly quote is actually attributed to the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi (369-286 BCE) — at this happy gathering of ANC members, some of whom will have been paid their salaries in the past month, we hope, was this: “We can use that [Zondo commission] report to hunt each other down and destroy everything that is in the movement, we can do that. Or we can use that report to look into the mistakes and weaknesses that are in that report and try to correct them. That is a better option for me.”
Reasonable observers would take this to mean that the ANC’s national philosopher was suggesting that the ANC ignore the bits of justice Raymond Zondo’s “Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture Report — Part 1” that recommend the National Prosecuting Authority look at prosecuting 20 individuals and companies that took part in state capture.
PWhat it means: The ANC is living in two contrasting realities and wants to believe it is still the party of the people, as opposed to the party of the plundered
A reminder that this is the first of three parts, so we’re just talking about the destruction of SAA by Dudu Myeni and others, the evisceration of the SA Revenue Service, and the use of government sponsorships by Mzwanele Manyi to funnel money to the Guptas and keep that sadly ineffectual propaganda rag The New Age (TNA) going, despite the fact that nobody read it. So there are more villains waiting in the wings.
And after all, why not just indulge in what the DA’s propaganda wing would probably describe as extreme wokery, and use the crimes and corruption of the past 27-odd years as a learning experience in a happy circle jerk of ANC rebirth? If the ANC chooses to self-identify as a victim, rather than as what neutral observers would suggest is the possibly more appropriate perpetrator, who are we to gainsay it?
Take Lindiwe Sisulu, for example, since we’re speaking of butterflies. This is an ANC stalwart who has been an MP since 1994, flitting from position to position, and touching the earth only lightly as she dances through ministry after ministry: home affairs, intelligence, defence, public service &
administration, human settlements, water & sanitation. And now, minister of tourism — perhaps her natural home, given that she claims to operate as an ethical tourist in SA’s history, though instead of taking only photographs and leaving only footprints, she’s more into taking only largesse and leaving only dysfunction.
In the august pages of the RET Weekly, otherwise known as Independent Media, in an opinion piece folksily titled “Hi Mzansi, Have We Seen Justice?”, Sisulu writes: “In our beloved
SA, a new constitution in 1994 and the rule of law took on a new lofty meaning after the deck had been heavily stacked against the victims of the ‘rule of law’. It was a new dispensation of justice after centuries of a vicious oppression of the indigenous of the land by invaders. But what has this beautiful constitution done for the victims except as a palliative (Panadol)?”
Seasoned readers of Independent, home to the website that puts the “L” into IOL (yes, I’m still pushing that one), will have encountered the famous wandering parentheses of the Indy subs before. Who can forget the immortal bit of selfowning in one of the Tembisa 10 flights of fiction, where they wrote: “Independent Media launched a detailed investigation — including the deployment of (perhaps) deep-cover operatives”?
Sisulu’s “(Panadol)” is as revealing, in its way, as the Independent’s “(perhaps)”: in both cases it’s an indication that they’re making up this stuff as they go along, and thinking about how to pitch it so that they can get away with it.
As with the “Hi Mzansi” headline, the inclination to change “palliative” to the more relatable “Panadol” is a transparent attempt to get readers to believe the ANC is still the party of the people, as opposed to the party of the plundered.
In Sisulu’s case, she wants us to believe the ANC is a revolutionary party dreaming that it’s a government, being bribed hither and thither — to all intents and purposes, a gravy train. But now it has awakened, and it doesn’t know if it’s a revolutionary party dreaming it’s a government, or a government dreaming it’s a revolutionary party. For Sisulu, the constitution and rule of law must go. All they do is give citizens the illusion that they can demand accountability from their rulers.
“There is a need for an overhaul of a justice system that does not work for Africa and Africans,” she writes.
And then there’s the breathtaking cry of the radical economic transformation faction of the ANC. “We have a neoliberal constitution with foreign inspiration, but who are the interpreters? And where is the African value system of this constitution and the rule of law? If the law does not work for Africans in Africa, then what is the use of the rule of law?”
Ah, yes, it is deeply annoying when former president Jacob Zuma and his fellow vultures are called to account for looting the country. I won’t comment on their attempts to insist that, when it comes to state capture and corruption, Africa is indeed a country.
Another great Sisuluism: “Many years down the line, Africans manage poverty while others manage wealth.”
Many people have made fun of this one, pointing out that Sisulu has been in power since 1994, earning a fat salary, and that she and her party have done the bare minimum to alleviate poverty, or to even bother giving the perception that they care.
Having once rented a flat from Sisulu and/or her husband (paperwork was imprecise), and having had my electricity throttled every now and then because they (or possibly the rental company managing their property) hadn’t bothered to use the money I gave them to actually pay the bills, I somewhat understand what she’s saying. Talk about a foreshadowing!
And, of course, I remember the happy day when I arrived home to find strangers checking out the flat as it was going to be on public auction the next day because of some financial nonpayments. Again, this could have been the fault of the rental company, but either way it does make me a little more sympathetic to her sentence about managing poverty.
If Helen Zille can see the benefits in colonialism, I guess we could also make the effort to try to see the benefits of 27 years of ANC misrule
Sisulu also writes, in a remarkably honest piece of self-analysis: “The primary motivation for the evils of the ANC was and still is economic. It is organised crime, the robbery of other people’s land and resources, as well as the exploitation and use of their labour. It is also about the reduction of these people to mass consumers and exclusion from the ownership of the factors of production and wealth creation. But it seems today we have legitimised wrongdoing under the umbrella of the rule of law.”
Oh, I beg your pardon. I appear to have misread that. It actually reads: “The primary motivation for the evils of colonialism was and still is economic.” Sorry — an easy mistake to make.
And if Helen Zille can see the benefits in colonialism, I guess we could also make the effort to try to see the benefits of 27 years of ANC misrule. After all, as Mantashe and Sisulu seem to believe, it’s all just a matter of perception. Who among us can really claim to know what is real, and what is not?
Manyi, for example, when asked to account for why TNA never joined the media’s circulation board, insists the publication was a community newspaper.
Ludicrously, when someone writes “Tell them Krila, they forget the TNA was like a community publication at the time”, his ego also demands that he insist: “No it was not. It was medium-size commercial.”
Like Manyi, the ANC is living in two contrasting realities. The one, where it is trying to pretend it’s a helpless victim so as to avoid accountability, and the other, where it’s trying to pretend it’s still worthy of being in charge. I doubt the party’s best and brightest have the philosophical wherewithal to put that one over on the country, but they’re going to fight an ugly rearguard action.