Article from the January 2014 issue of Noseweek Magazine.
The glue that holds different communities together is equal rights and shared democratic cultures – not ethnicity
In his new introduction to Nelson Mandela: No Easy Walk to Freedom – a classic collection of Mandela’s speeches, letters and transcripts – respected author and political commentator William Gumede demonstrates just how far the current leadership has strayed from the ANC’s vision under the old guard.
The first thing that strikes one as one reads the pages of Nelson Mandela’s speeches, letters and transcripts collected in No Easy Walk to Freedom is that he and his generation of ANC and ANC Youth League leaders were political giants compared with the current cohort. During the ‘dark times’ of apartheid, the Mandela generation was far more visionary, intellectually astute, open to new ideas and far wiser.
The success of the African National Congress as a liberation movement during colonialism and apartheid rested on visionary leadership, on striving to be racially, ethnically and class inclusive, being accountable to its members, practising inclusive democracy and the exemplary personal behaviour of its leaders.
The failure of most African and Eastern European liberation-movements-turned-governments is the moral corruption of the leaders and parties who hold power, even if they have a just cause and impeccable “struggle” credentials.
Amilcar Cabral, one of the great thinkers of African liberation ideology, said that the success of African liberation movements that become governments depends more than anything else on the personal moral behaviour, decency and honesty of their leaders and members.
What kind of morality are we talking about? In the context of political parties, governments and leaders, we are talking about democratic morality, which transcends narrow religious and cultural traditions and ethnicities.
The ANC’s success was to turn the struggle against apartheid into a moral struggle: in fact, to turn it into a global moral struggle. This strategy could not have succeeded without leaders with huge moral authority who, by their individual ethical and moral conduct, reinforced the moral dimensions of the struggle. The current reality is, embarrassingly, quite the opposite. This is illustrated in the wide difference between the moral authority of Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo or Walter Sisulu – all members of the Mandela generation – and the murkiness of Jacob Zuma, the ANC president, and the populism of Julius Malema, the expelled ANC Youth League president. The fact that the morally flawed Zuma could be elected to the presidency by the ANC is in itself testimony to the moral regression of the party.
Apartheid and colonialism left black South Africans with massive “existential insecurity”, meaning, in the words of Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, “a persistent, generalised sense of threat and unease” because their survival was systematically threatened on every level – personal, familial, communal, cultural and national.
In South Africa this “existential insecurity” has generated “illiberal attitudes” in the wider citizenry: violent crime, a low level of tolerance for differences, xenophobia, social conservatism and so on.
In many African post-independence societies, the leaders of independence movements have spectacularly failed to provide leadership in the context of both broken societies and broken individuals, most of them lacking the imagination to do so.
Martha Cabrera, the Nicaraguan social psychologist of the revolution in her country, said: “What we need is leadership that starts with the personal, leaders who lead from their own values, their own life.”
Mandela, as evidenced by the letters and speeches in No Easy Walk to Freedom, undoubtedly retained his dignity during the “dark times” – and when he emerged from them. For Mandela, the moral integrity of a leader was crucial.
President Jacob Zuma’s appalling statement during his rape trial in 2006 that he could see by the way a woman dressed that she was looking for sex, is indicative of the decline in moral integrity of our leaders. Unable to secure respect by behaving with integrity, Zuma’s supporters, specifically the SACP in KwaZulu-Natal, have called for a law to “protect the dignity” of the president. In contrast, because of his moral integrity, personified by his exemplary personal behaviour as leader, Mandela was respected even by his opponents.
In the ANC of the 1940s, 50s and early 60s – in which Mandela cut his political teeth – the democratic spirit was premium. The ANC’s Youth League statement of policy, which was developed in the mid-1940s, called for “true democracy” in South Africa and Africa. Even as a young Youth League leader, Mandela was more democratic in outlook than many of the current ANC leaders, a number of whom seemingly appear to believe in a very narrow version of democracy. Even during the 1960s, Mandela had strong views on the kind of democracy he envisaged for a free South Africa. He argued for a parliamentary system, a Bill of Rights, the doctrine of separation of powers, as well as the independence and impartiality of the judiciary that “never fails to arouse my admiration”.
This is truly revolutionary, as many African liberation movements and their leaders have viewed democracy in its narrowest sense, sometimes wrongly insisting that democracy only meant holding elections. Others argued that democracy was not African; it was “foreign” and “Western”.
Of course, our “ideas of political and personal rights have taken their particular form only relatively recently, and it is hard to see them as ‘traditional’ commitments of Western cultures”. Many elements of democracy are found in both traditional Asian and African cultures, as well as Western ones.
Again, some African leaders argued that pursuing democracy was an expensive luxury, given the staggering development backlogs in their newly independent countries. They insisted that economic development must come before democracy. Damningly, the record speaks for itself: they have achieved neither development nor democracy. Research across developing countries has shown that democracy is not only compatible with growth and poverty reduction but may be crucial to both.
Key ANC leaders participated in the writing of South Africa’s constitution, widely considered among the most progressive in the world. Incredibly, some leaders are now saying that the country’s constitution, particularly its provision for freedom of expression, “undermines” development.
As the ANC celebrated its one-hundredth anniversary, anti-democratic leaders, groups and factions appeared to have a stranglehold on the party and democrats seemed to be in retreat. Zuma and his supporters, in their campaign to quash corruption charges against him, attacked the judiciary, democratic institutions, the media and other critics. During his campaign to secure the presidency of the ANC at the party’s 2007 Polokwane conference Zuma remained silent when his militant supporters, such as former Youth League president Julius Malema, said they would “kill” to ensure that the corruption charges against him were dropped and to make sure Zuma became the country’s next president.
Under both Mbeki and Zuma’s presidencies, watchdog institutions, such as the Human Rights Commission, have been cowed into submission by patronage appointments and threats by government leaders that their funding and resources would be withdrawn if they criticised the government or the ANC.
The Zuma presidency is now pushing through a draft Protection of Information Bill that will give the government broad powers to classify almost any information involving an agency of the state as “top secret”, not to be reported on or divulged in the interests of “national security”.
The draft bill prescribes penalties of up to 25 years in prison for those trying to uncover such “protected” information, disclosing such information, found in possession of such information or refusing to reveal their sources. The public’s right to access government documents would also be restricted. Clearly such a law will cover up official corruption and punish whistle-blowers and the media who expose wrongdoing.
It is poor governance, the inability by the government to redress poverty, while leaders enjoy extravagant lifestyles funded by public money and corruption and dishonesty of leaders that are the biggest threats to the stability of South Africa – not exposing these despicable actions.
The strength of the ANC during the Mandela era was its ability to portray itself as a more racially inclusive alternative to the racially segregated colonial and apartheid ruling parties of South Africa. Mandela’s African nationalism was far more embracing and inclusive and non-racial in outlook than the narrow Africanism espoused by many leaders in the ANC and its Youth League today.
During his campaign to secure the presidency of the ANC at the party’s 2007 Polokwane conference, Zuma was silent when supporters wore “100% Zulu” T-shirts, and the inclusive, non- tribal and non-racial ethos of the ANC’s 100-year-long struggle effectively went out of the window. Playing the tribal card, whether openly or subtly, especially in times of political trouble or in leadership battles, is dangerous.
Mandela’s African nationalism was far more inclusive and non-racial than the narrow Africanism espoused by many ANC leaders today
It allows for grievances to be expressed along ethnic lines and makes ethnic mobilisation and violence easier.
During his campaign for a second term ahead of the ANC’s 2012 Mangaung national conference, Zuma again remained silent while supporters mobilised Zulu speakers to vote for him on the basis of ethnicity rather than on his performance in government and in his party. Mandela’s 1962 statement in the dock during his political trial for inciting resistance against the apartheid government neatly stated that South Africaness cannot be defined in relation to an ethnic majority In his auto-biography, written clandestinely in the Robben Island prison in 1974, Mandela appealed to the best of African traditions, culture and custom to argue that “a minority was not to be crushed by a majority”. For him, black solidarity stopped when his fellow black leaders behaved undemocratically or were corrupt or uncaring.
From Mandela’s speeches it is clear that, for him, Michael Ignatieff’s concept of “civic nationalism” was applicable to his vision of a future South Africa. In “civic nationalism” the glue that holds different communities together is equal rights and shared democratic cultures, values and institutions, rather than ethnic nationalism, which uses ethnicity as the main principle of belonging.
