ANC could best serve SA by saving itself
HOME Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba’s defence of his party’s leader, President Jacob Zuma, captures quite neatly the pathology afflicting the organisation. Defensive, insulting, arrogant and self-serving, Gigaba’s response typifies the modern ANC timeserver, drunk with power and oblivious to the harm being caused to South Africa’s prospects by Zuma’s continued tenure in the Union Buildings.
If you thought the ANC’s vitriol towards all opposition was confined to Mmusi Maimane and Julius Malema, think again.
For Gigaba and the new breed of Zumacrat ensconced in the upper ranks of the ANC, equally fair game for insult are Ahmed Kathrada (jailed most of his adult life with Nelson Mandela), Trevor Manuel (arguably one of the country’s finest ANC ministers yet), Ronnie Kasrils (a struggle veteran who gave his all for freedom) and George Bizos (Mandela’s former lawyer).
Dismissing them as a “mixed bag of so-called ANC stalwarts and disillusioned ANC ex-leaders”, Gigaba claims, ludicrously, that they have “joined the clamour of the opposition in claiming the president has violated the constitution and should therefore resign”.
Breaking news, Mr Gigaba: no one is “claiming” Zuma violated the constitution.
That fact was established by no less than the justices of the Constitutional Court. Not only did Zuma violate the constitution, but parliament (read: the ANC) is similarly guilty of what amounts to a cover-up in plain daylight of its leader’s tracks in the Nkandla debacle.
It should be a sobering thought for us all that, even if Zuma is forced from office, there may be plenty more “Zumas” waiting in the wings of Luthuli House to take over the reins.
So, even now that the court has spoken and reinforced public protector Thuli Madonsela’s damning findings, the realisation may be dawning that the problem may not be so much Zuma as the ANC itself. Or its latter-day iteration.
Today, on our news pages, we report on the grassroots revolt shaping up in ANC branches, presumably representing members who do not gain as much from Zuma’s misrule as the likes of Gigaba continue to do.
It may be wishful thinking to appeal to the ANC’s nobler instincts to do the right thing for the country and cleanse itself of the poison that is its wayward leadership. But we have to believe that there are still people in the ANC who remain true to its founding principles and ideals.
That is why we support those reformists who still feel the movement can find inspiration from earlier, selfless struggles, and do the right thing.
More broadly, though, the Zuma debacle, and the ANC’s churlish behaviour in parliament in snubbing Madonsela, bring into sharp relief the need for that realignment in our politics that is so long overdue. Like the National Party before it, which fell apart when apartheid ended, the ANC’s broad-church approach in the pursuit of liberation may also have run its course.
What is needed is vigorous political competition among parties trading on ideological differences, not on what they did or did not do in the past.
In the meantime, all strength to those forces in the ANC that still hold dear the promise of a better life for all citizens, not just the party elite.
They understand, where others appear to fail to, that Zuma will one day be part of history. But will the party he leaves behind be anything more than a careerist organisation in terminal decline?
It should be a simple choice.