ANC has failed the people, says activist Naidoo

ONE of Durban’s famous sons, Kumi Naidoo, said this week that South Africa’s leadership was in crisis.

Speaking at the launch of his book Letters to my Mother: The Making of a Troublemaker, Niadoo said the country did not have bad leaders but simply lacked any form of leadership.

Naidoo, a former youth freedom fighter and global human rights and environmental activist, said the situation in the country could have been “significantly worse” if it wasn’t for a small number of civil servants like murdered whistle-blower Babita Deokaran, and a handful of politicians in the ANC. Deokaran was gunned down last year for exposing corruption in the Gauteng Department of Health.

In a wide-ranging talk about issues affecting the country, he said the ANC failed the people and had one last chance, which it didn’t deserve, to prove it could bring about positive change. Failing that, Naidoo said: “We must mobilise and get them out of power in the next election.”

He said people were “gatvol” because many of those in positions of leadership had let them down.

“South Africa in reality had more democratic engagement and participation of its people during apartheid than during democracy.

“What kind of leadership do we have that they can print a cabinet ministerial handbook that says their rent is paid, that their electricity is paid, the water is paid?” said Naidoo.

In Letters to my Mother: The Making of a Troublemaker he deals with various facets of his life including the impact of his mother’s suicide when he was a child, and that of his ‘son’ Riky Rick the rapper, in February this year.

Naidoo said his sister, Kay, was 19 at the time of his mom’s death and she became mother to him and his brother, Kovin. He said when she died of cancer in 2018 it was as if he had lost his mother all over again.

Writing the book, he said, was a “k**k” experience and he cried “a helluva lot”. “I was alone and finally coming to terms with the trauma of my mom’s death,” said Naidoo.

He hoped his story would inspire a new generation of South Africans to respond to the urgent social and environmental challenges of our times.