An uneasy ANC centenary, a call for cleansing
BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa, Jan 8 (Reuters) - A black bull bellows and snorts in its death throes, sacrificed with a ceremonial spear in an age-old African cleansing ritual to ward off evil spirits and appease the souls of ancestors.
South African President Jacob Zuma led the purification ceremony at the weekend at the site where the ruling party he leads, the African National Congress (ANC), was born 100 years ago. The birth launched decades of exile, protest and armed struggle that finally ended apartheid white-minority rule In 1994, when elections ushered in a multi-racial democracy.
“It's important that it be cleansed,” said Baba Ndungane, a Zulu “sangoma” or traditional healer, speaking near the Waaihoek Wesleyan Church.
The brick, tin-roofed building where a century ago Africa's oldest liberation movement was formed in a black township in the city of Bloemfontein is now dwarfed by the looming towers of a disused power station.
Ndungane, in a beaded headband and a leopard-print robe, said the area needed cleansing because it may have witnessed robberies, rapes and violence over the years.
As the ANC celebrated its 100th birthday on Sunday in a 100 million rand ($12.3 million)commemoration that included a huge banquet for invited heads of state and guests, a splurge of celebrity music shows and even a golf tournament, many were clamouring for the party itself to clean up its act after nearly 18 years at the head of Africa's most powerful economy.
Under such legendary leaders as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo, who endured persecution and imprisonment, the ANC gained near-mythical status. Once the yoke of apartheid was thrown off, it began ruling South Africa in a blaze of international goodwill that idolised it as moral beacon for a troubled continent and world.
Close to two decades later, this image has dimmed as critics inside and outside the country and movement accuse ANC leaders of indulging in the spoils of office, squandering and raping mineral resources and engaging in vicious power struggles.
Even as party leaders rallied in Bloemfontein at the weekend cloaked in self-congratulatory slo- gans such as “Unity in Diversity” and “100 Years of Selfless Struggle”, in the nearby farming town of Thaba Nchu, two anti-apartheid veterans in their 80s seethed at what they saw as the betrayal of their ideals.
“Selfless rule, my foot!” spluttered 84-year-old Sally Motlana, widow of the late Dr. Nthato Motlana, an antiapartheid activist who was Mandela's doctor.
Speaking to Reuters in the house of one of the earlier presidents of the ANC, James Sebe Moroka, she and Moroka's daughter-in-law Gladys Moroka, 80, railed against Zuma and his government, criticising the power struggle that forced out president Thabo Mbeki and attacking the selfenrichment “gravy train” that they said tarnished the top echelons of the party.
“The only thing that makes me proud of the ANC is the liberation of the people of South Africa. But the present government has nothing that makes me proud,” said Motlana, who was a prominent anti-apartheid activist in her own right. “The anger in me could kill a human being.”
She and fellow ANC stalwart Moroka believe the party, which still commands huge support and respect, has lost its way, neglecting the broad democratic consensus that was one of its biggest strengths against apartheid and straying from Mandela's vision of a “rainbow nation” uniting all, regardless of race.
“Where is the rainbow nation at this (centenary) conference?” said Motlana, a lifetime vice-president of the South African Council of Churches who was imprisoned in the 1970s under apartheid. A missionary-educated Anglican, she accused Zuma and his ruling group of espousing narrow factionalism and blasted the Zulu rituals - such as the cleansing - with which he likes to surround himself. “I didn't go to jail for that,” Motlana said, adding she was
not sure she would even continue to vote for the ANC.
Although there is no question that emotional support for the ANC, its history and its ideals remains high among a majority of South Africans, anger at the luxury lifestyles and conspicuous consumption of many of the ruling elite and their business backers burns strongly.
So does a widespread sense that the ANC has not delivered on its post-apartheid promise to provide “a better life for all”.