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Joram Nyathi Spectrum
There are deliberate efforts to delink the ANC elite or leadership from its rural support in the name of modernisation. The emphasis for leadership criteria is now more on academic qualifications than a commitment to the welfare of the masses through a fundamental transformation of the economy. The emphasis is now more on alliances of the urban elite who are more prone and susceptible to “mental capture” than those who can most forcibly articulate the needs and problems of African poverty. To qualify for leadership one must be as mentally white as possible.
IS Zanu-PF aware of what’s going on in the land of Steve Biko, what is happening to the ANC and its implications? Can it hear the ringing changes in the land of Mandela? Even at this late hour, it must open its eyes and stop consuming itself. Zuma and ANC are not the end.
Let me start with a confession.
I begrudge the South Africans for their love for their Constitution.
Yes, the same neo-liberal constitution which ensures poor blacks stay poor and that white South Africans maintain their racist, settler-plus-apartheid-era privileges until Jesus returns to save the world. It is one of the Nelson Mandela legacies which they must cherish forever.
I was, therefore, not surprised by people’s reaction when the South African Constitutional Court found that President Jacob Zuma had violated the Constitution in failing to act on Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s findings that he should take “remedial action” for excess expenditure on security upgrades at his Nkandla homestead.
This was a triumph for the constitution; it was a major triumph for democracy, the new bible being deployed by aliens seeking to maintain control over the natural resources of a post-colonial Africa.
Even Zimbabweans went wild on social media to praise the supposed independence of the South African Judiciary.
The ruling was further evidence that there was democracy, they said, unlike in Zimbabwe where the Judiciary could justify the land reform programme.
The Constitutional Court ruling was immediately followed by calls for Zuma’s recall by the ANC and his impeachment by Parliament.
For now, the ANC has refused to recall Zuma while the impeachment bid instigated by the white Democratic Alliance aided by Malema’s EFF collapsed in the National Assembly on Tuesday this week. (Fin24 says the vote was split 243 against 133 in favour of Zuma while News24 split the numbers as 233 against 143.)
That loss has not appeased those agitating for Zuma’s removal for infringing the constitution and therefore undermining the country’s apartheid democracy.
Those who have followed the Spectrum should know that President Zuma has never been my favourite ever since he lost his “Mshini wami” and forsook his “shower cap”.
Since assuming office following the ignominious recall of Thabo Mbeki, Zuma and the governing ANC have gravitated too close to the centre from the left, but he has failed to live up to the high ethical standards expected of a neo-liberal gentleman serving an elitist establishment.
He is a polygamist, his presidency has been dogged by scandals of every form, he is viewed as illiterate and venal.
His attempt to turn himself into a neo-liberal gentleman inadvertently led to the emergence of his erstwhile ardent supporter, Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters who felt that he had abandoned the country’s poor rural majority.
Max du Preez, that liberal Afrikaner journalist living up the apartheid legacy, about sums up with what contempt Zuma is viewed by the right-wingers and liberals he has been trying to appease and who are very happy to see his back in the name of democracy and the constitution.
This is what he says in an article published in News24 on February 9, 2016:
“The ANC was never a movement led by rural people, subsistence farmers or ethnic traditionalists. The founders in 1912 were learned intellectuals and the movement was increasingly seated in the cities and bigger towns. Zuma is the first ANC president in 104 years without a tertiary academic qualification.”
In short, since 2009 President Zuma has struggled to impress the country’s elite, civic society organisations and white capital, and has always been viewed as an interloper.
His close association with the Gupta family has led to the crime of “state capture” while his decision to let Sudanese leader Al-Bashir leave the country earlier this year instead of handing him over to the ICC turned him into a criminal president. It was a matter of time. He was on notice.
That notice also covers the African National Congress itself, the party of Nelson Mandela, which should have delivered a better life for the black majority and still has some potential to upset the status quo in favour of the marginalised blacks through purposeful redistribution of land, what President Mugabe has characterised as a need “for a second revolution”.
That makes the latest developments against Zuma and the ANC have far reaching implications beyond the borders of South Africa, well into Zimbabwe in particular.
Mental capture
There are deliberate efforts to delink the ANC elite or leadership from its rural support in the name of modernisation. The emphasis for leadership criteria is now more on academic qualifications than a commitment to the welfare of the masses through a fundamental transformation of the economy.
The emphasis is now more on alliances of the urban elite who are more prone and susceptible to “mental capture” than those who can most forcibly articulate the needs and problems of African poverty. To qualify for leadership one must be as mentally white as possible.
President Zuma’s administration is now accused of clientelism, cronyism and other petty ills of liberal democracy. Nobody talks about white privileges accrued during settler colonialism and under apartheid such as confiscation of land. Those racially-inspired privileges cannot be renounced nor challenged and the South African constitution has normalised these anomalies. White sins must be forgiven and forgotten, petty African offences must be prosecuted to the gates of prison, a fate which awaits Zuma
Today black South Africans are being asked to ignore and forget the grievous ills of the past in the name of modernising and civilising the African National Congress. In other words the ANC must abandon the cause of the people and compete with the DA around borrowed liberal ideologies of property rights, human rights, and democracy without ownership and control of the economy.
This is a disease Africa has tolerated or ignored over the years at its peril.
Most fundamentally, the fight to weaken and ultimately remove the ANC from power on petty accusations of misgovernance aims to isolate, weaken and finally get Zanu-PF out of power too, and replace it with a Zimbabwean versions of DA. Save for the ANC, Zanu-PF is now largely surrounded by client states of America, governing parties not likely to challenge imperialist hegemony, pliant parties whose key electoral slogan is foreign direct investment, human rights, democracy and menial jobs.
This is the context in which Zanu-PF should read the goings-on in South Africa, even as the party dissipates its energies on internal wrangling. The fight goes beyond the ANC. For its part, the ANC is the only organisation in South Africa which can claim to stand for the wishes of the African people and has a history to back that claim. It’s the only party which poses a threat to white capital. Zuma, damaged as he is, is still the face of that potential, despite, if not because, of his lack of formal education.
His deputy Cyril Ramaphosa, an affable man outside of politics, gets fulsome praise from liberals as an educated modern man who also happens to be rich.
That sort of a man cannot upset the proverbial apple-cart, that is why his involvement in the Marikana debacle is so readily dismissible, along with the 42 dead. This is how Max du Preez sums him up, as a foil to the rustic Nkandla villager:
“Ramaphosa has a law degree and is one of the wealthiest people in the country. He is married to a medical doctor, Tshepo Motsepe, sister of the billionaire Patrice Motsepe. Ramaphosa is a connoisseur of the finer things in life and completely at home in any international company or on any world stage. He was the chairperson of the Constituent Assembly that gave us our constitution in 1996.”
This is the new face of the ANC, a face which will be acceptable in South Africa and to international capital. That face cannot be allowed to sit comfortably next to a Zanu-PF still able to mobilise war veterans to chant slogans in support of land reform, black economic empowerment, and shows no fear of the white man. Are there still comrades to be relied upon for solidarity across the Limpopo?
Online Reporter