Dear Comrades Below I have pasted two very interesting articles that call for a nice engagement.
ST An activist from afar *THE BATTLE FOR THE CARCASS OF THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS* By *Mzukisi Qobo* <http://voices.news24.com/author/mzukisi-qobo/> Son of Man, can these bones live? And I answered: Sovereign Lord, you alone know (Ezekiel 37:3) But someone may ask: How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come? (1 Corinthians 15:35) It will require more than a miracle to save the African National Congress from the haunting spectre of the dead. Its destiny is one-directional: extinction. The party that once was a colossus has become a pale shadow of its former self, and without ideological form and vision. With the embers of life departing from its bones, the ANC is countenancing a gloomy destiny as a political fossil. If there is anything that is sustaining the ANC today it is history, memory and mythology. All that the party seems most adept at is summoning the ancestral spirit embodied in its 100 year history to justify why we should continue to put faith in it, and why it is entitled to rule until the Second Coming of Christ, to use the phrase of its President Jacob Zuma. This masks the ANC’s poverty of substance both intellectual and moral under its current crop of leadership. Basking in the glory of remembrance of times gone by, the ANC fails to gaze beyond the fog of the present and dream of a different future. While the ANC’s rhetoric still finds strong resonance with the older generation, in a country where young people are growing proportion of society and are increasingly disillusioned with their socio-economic conditions, such historic sentiments will inevitably cool off. History is not sufficient to carry the ANC into future glory. It is no guarantee of continual success. In no time, the ANC will be dispatched into the ash heap of history, attracting curiosity from historians who are interested in the rise and fall of liberation movements. Consider, for example, Zuma’s speech in Mangaung centenary celebrations early this month. The core of the speech was drowned in historical detail, giving very little evidence of a leader who is seized with thoughts of transforming the party and building the nation. While history may help to remind us of where we come from and warn us of what not to do, it is a poor handmaiden for animating a new vision and stimulating progress. More like a rear-view mirror, by its very nature, it cannot provide clarity of direction. A different leader would have used such an important occasion to set a powerful and transformational tone that launches society into a conversation about the kind of future South Africans should envision and aspire to. Transformational leaders are forward-looking and use history to craft a different and exciting narrative about the future. It is not only that Zuma, the leader, is woefully lacking on this front, it is also that the ANC has reached a moment of exhaustion on its long journey to defeat apartheid. The priorities of its leaders today are not the same as those of their forbears. They are also not the same as those of society. The current leadership of the ANC seems unable to use history lessons correctly; it fails to connect the best of the ANC’s core values that helped to sustain its anti-apartheid struggles, and the imperative of creating a new spirit and reference point for change that is not just inspired by the past but also draws on the best from both the present and the future possibilities. The place of ideological self-renewal and vision that used to mark the ANC’s character in the past has been supplanted by debilitating factional battles, plots, and lust for state resources. State power is no longer seen as a viable tool to enact a different agenda for transformation, but a short-cut to self-enrichment for party cadres and cronies through tenders and placements in government positions or diplomatic posts abroad. Its leaders are hell bent on making South Africa an object of ridicule in the world. We no longer have a battle for the soul of the ANC aimed at defining its essence, vision, and programme; but a battle for the carcass of the ANC – about who should be the chief undertaker to preside over its eventual burial. It is not far-fetched, therefore, to conclude that the real ANC is dead, and what exists today is its mummified version – an ancestor – propped up through invocation of history, selective memory, symbols and myths to mask its impotence and anachronism. As the British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm warns us in his work On History: ‘History as inspiration and ideology has a built-in tendency to become self-justifying myth. Nothing is a more dangerous blindfold than this…’ Those who hope the ANC will change – as well as the best of its minds that still remain within – suffer from delusion. They are not only legitimising an evidently chaotic party, but they are also giving false hope of its possible renewal. They are betraying the future. It is possible to draw a line between the ANC of old that waged a remarkable battle against oppression; that inspired anti-colonial struggles in the African continent; that boasted incorruptible and noble leaders; and that triumphed over the apartheid regime and brought democracy on the one hand, and the decadent ANC of Jacob Zuma that has spawned maladministration, corruption, and a profound sense of despair in the nation. The tale of the two ANC’s and their different revolutions –one noble and the other perverse – brings to life the reflections of Edmund Burke on the monstrous progeny of the French Revolution, which he penned in his Letters on a Regicide Peace: ‘’out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination, and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappaled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could not believe it was possible she could at all exist.’ Perhaps, these bones can still live, but in the terrifying shape of a monstrosity that threatens to devour the best that history has bequeathed us, and decimate the future yet to be born. * Dr Qobo is a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria, a Political Risk Analyst and a member of the Midrand Group. A version of this article was first published in the Sowetan newspaper. (Visited 6 times) ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I read Dr Qobo’s article with great interest because he was sold to us as an academic, a political scientist and as a thinker. I re-read his article again and again hoping to find some trace of the scientist, academic or serious thinker. Instead what I came away with is a slew of exaggerations, innuendos, the usual fare of our Sunday newspapers and the standard insulting generalisations about the ANC leadership being corrupt and money-grubbing. The delightful thing about wild generalisations is that they are self-affirming. The accuser need not point at anyone. Like the anti-Semite who says all Jews are corrupt, he does not have to demonstrate that Samuel Shapiro is corrupt, or that Hyman Levy is corrupt, or that Isaac Lieberman is corrupt. No! As Jews they are by definition corrupt. So too Dr Qobo. He need not tell us who in the ANC leadership is corrupt, nor does he have to prove that charge against Kgalema Motlhanthe, or Baleka Mbete, or Joel Netshithenzhe, Mantasshe or Jeff Radebe. Hell no!! They are by definition corrupt, as ANC leaders! Why does he not have the courage to name the corrupt?? After all if it’s all so obvious we should all quickly agree with him. The answer to that is simple. Short on analysis our political scientist/ academic has recourse to urban legend. Anyone with a smattering of political savvy knows that urban legends are usually a tissue of lies, wrapped around a threadbare narrative about one or two people, but used to smear thousands. So now the dishonesty of a few known, tried and convicted individuals is used to smear everyone in the ANC. Clever for a Joseph Goebels; but disappointing for a political scientist Are these the methods of an academic who hopes to be taken seriously?? But this is what is passed on to the unsuspecting public is serious scientific analysis!! Reallly??!!?? Are there differences amongst ANC members? Are there arguments among ANC members? Are there disputes over political office in the ANC? Of cause there are!! And, had our academic, political scientist bothered to investigate, he would have discovered that these are as old as the ANC itself!! What is more, as a political scientist we expect that Dr Qobo has noticed such disputation in other political parties worldwide as well!! Take the current primaries among the US’s Republican party. There are now five candidates, all swear blind they are good Republicans, but they each have different agendas to address the US’s problems. Each of them too wants political office and the plums that go with it!! But our serious academic finds this somehow deviant among ANC leaders?? Why???!!?? No explanation! Reading De Qobo one has a sense of déjà vu. I keep telling myself – I have read all this before! Why does this sound so much like “Rooi Rus” Swanepoel during the late 1960s? Or the nimble-footed journalists who wrote during the early 1970s? Or the madly-in-love with BC commentators of the late 1970s? They all have one thing in common. An animus against the ANC, which they neither know nor understand; a South African public they neither know nor understand; and no experience of serious political struggle, which they neither know nor understand! Firstly, the ANC was born at least 25 years before the term “apartheid”was even coined! At least 36 years before it became state policy! To a serious academic that implies that the ANC was waging a struggle against something more than apartheid! “Apartheid” after all is but one form of a system of racial domination. That it turned out to be the final incarnation of that system is another question. The ANC waged struggle for freedom against White domination, and it called that a system of Colonialism of a Special Type(CST). And, one finds that it is that fundamental incomprehension of the system that we were fighting to overthrow that confuses so many commentators. Far too many seem to think it was merely a system of racial segregation writ large! Yet, if they understood that it was a system on internal colonialism, they might do better. As the colonising power is still resident and shares the territory with us, unlike classic colonialism, where the colonising power left, ours are right here contesting the shape of our future using the resources they had accumulated at our expense. In the process they sow doubt, disillusion, despair and despondency. Secondly, during its history the fortunes of the ANC have ebbed and flowed. To a serious academic that should come as no surprise. There are times when the movement is at its best. There are others when it is at its worst. Such is life and politics. Those who imagine politics as five or four year cycles between elections are quick to write off political formations they either don’t like or that they fear. But those who know that politics is for the long haul will be a bit more patient and cautious. When Biko and the BCM were on everyone’s lips, many wrote the ANC off as a movement led by “old men” ;”out of touch with South African reality”; “too long in exile”; “out-dated”; “ outstripped by events”;etc. Pity there is no eat-your-hat reprisal that political actors can impose on the over-clever commentator! Dr Qobo could well be a candidate for such! All Dr Qobo has done is vent his spleen! He has offered no analysis. He does not even point the way forward! (But then perhaps he does not know it!) So Dr Qobo does not like the ANC. Well and good. That is his right. But if he wants to convince us that his dislike is well grounded he had better offer us some convincing arguments. What do his arguments boil down to?? (i) The ANC is 100 years old and lives on its history and myths. (ii) There is serious disagreement amongst its members about the way forward. (iii) Zuma was long on history, but short on vision on January 8 th. Oh, I forgot, the ANC leadership are corrupt! Can that be said to be serious political argument?? Pleeezzzz??? It is evident though that Dr Qobo does not know this history of the ANC and is hardly able to sift history from myth! What are these “myths” that the ANC lives on?? He can’t tell us. Dr Qobo would be wise to weigh just one or two heavy duty facts. (i) Before 1994 our economy was structured to serve the minority at the expense of the majority and the ANC has the challenge of reversing and re-structuring the economy to serve the majority. [ If he doubts what I am saying, let him examine how the South African economy responded to international currents prior to 1994. Even today or business community, which is still White-dominated and has merely co-opted a handful of Africans, insists that they will not create jobs unless the law permits them to employ people at rock-bottom wages. In other words a return to the economics of White domination. Even a fool could see that what we need is a growing internal market, attainable only with high wages and an expanding body of consumers.] (ii) Despite all the disappointments, and they have been many, this country has never before enjoyed seventeen years of continuous stability, with no major political upheavals prior to 1994. [and Dr Qobo can check that with any time-chart he chooses to employ!] Which makes me wonder how this decadent, near death body he so despises managed to do that!! Makes you think doesn’t it?? So? What is the ANC’s secret?? Like many before him Dr Qobo is blinded by the events, sights and sounds of the moment and has rushed to judgement. I wager in another few years, he will pen yet another write off. But he very likely will be again proved wrong! What does this tell us? It is very easy to cast stones and pronounce anathemas! Sorry Dr Qobo, far cleverer men than you have done so in the past. We all know who is in the ash-can of history and who is governing the country. So, please, don’t vote for the ANC! But permit the rest of us to continue voting for a movement with a proven track record. And watch out for those ashes!! The ash can too is getting really crowded!! -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
