ANC no longer the ANC of Albert Luthuli’s day

MARION Sparg wrote an open letter to President Jacob Zuma, published in the City Press this past weekend. She calls upon Zuma to resign in the aftermath of the public protector’s report on Nkandla.

In doing so, she reminisces about another place and time when she knew Zuma as a different kind of a person who loved his country and the ANC deeply. She writes, “I repeat all of this . . . to explain to those who have not had the opportunities I have had to know you, that there’s a side to you they do not know.”

She makes reference to the fact that no finding of wrongdoing has been made against Zuma directly, but argues that the fact is inconsequential in the light of Zuma being the president of South Africa and of the ANC. She writes, “Not only are we going into general elections but our country desperately needs a sign – one that says the sceptics and naysayers are wrong, that the so-called honeymoon period is not over and that ‘the ANC of the past’ is not dead.”

Sparg states that she will vote ANC on May 7. This is regardless of whe- ther Zuma accepts her invitation to resign or not.

My reading of her is that she is concerned that other South Africans might not be as unwavering in their commitment to the ANC’s rule of South Africa as to renew the organisation’s mandate, no matter what.

One of the most outstanding leaders for all time that Africa has ever produced is Kwame Nkrumah. One of the political lessons we should learn from him was embedded in his argument that political leaders and organisations must be evaluated on the basis of what they represent at the moment of evaluation, rather than on the basis of their historical record.

If we take this lesson seriously, and we should, we cannot express our undying commitment to organisations and leaders, as Sparg does, irrespective of what they represent today. It is this tendency precisely which has led to the ruin of various countries in Africa.

The call on Zuma to resign is laudable.

It would do the country a lot of good if he heeded it.

In fact the ANC should never have inflicted him on South Africa. It is a good thing, I think, that Sparg reminds Zuma of what the man once represented.

Assuming that he has not silenced his conscience completely, one must hope that such reminiscences might jolt something in him to restore him to the values he once represented.

But why should Sparg write about the Zuma of yesteryears for the benefit of those who do not know him as closely as she does? How are we supposed to be affected by the knowledge that once upon a time Zuma represented something different from the image he projects today?

The answer lies in Sparg’s admo- nition that South Africa faces general elections in which many of her compatriots are looking for a signal which will help them decide whether to throw in their lot with the ANC or not.

Therefore not only is it good for us to know Zuma a little better as we make calculations in our heads as to which party gets our crosses in the impending elections, we also need to know that “the ANC of the past is not dead”. But is it not? Let’s say it’s not. Then we have a worse dilemma than we might, if we simply accepted that the ANC which is led by Zuma is qualitatively different from the ANC that was led, for example, by Chief Albert Luthuli. The image I have of that ANC was an organisation which pursued lofty political principles.

Not, by any chance, that I ever agreed with everything it espoused.

Nevertheless, I admitted the way in which that organisation marshalled arguments which, even if I disagreed, I could see where it came from and where it wanted to take us. I cannot imagine that under Luthuli the ANC would threaten to change the laws of the country merely because it want- ed to save one of its leaders from facing prosecution on corruption charges.

I cannot see that under Luthuli ANC cabinet ministers would rally around their leader and demonise judges and the public protector, and even dismantle investigative organisations they had themselves called into existence, merely because they did not wish certain embarrassing revelations to come to the fore. I cannot see that under Luthuli, the SA Revenue Services might come under public suspicion that it is used by the ruling party to settle political scores.

I cannot see that an ANC presided over by Luthuli might have policemen under its watch mow down protesters at Marikana and other places, and then, as Raymond Suttner complained, ensure through police action that the truth remains suppressed.

If Sparg is right that the ANC we see today is the same ANC, then we were duped all along in the noble ideas we held about the organisation. Then we would have to approach the forthcoming elections on that basis.