Former president Jacob Zuma and now leader of uMkhonto weSizwe party. File photo
The state is a bond of citizens built on reason and morality. These were the words of the 20th century sage and first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomas Masaryk.
His raison d’être, he told the world through his work as a philosopher, was to help, in a small way, to ensure that people became less tolerant of bad governments and to strive to establish strong constitutional orders with all their attendant freedoms.
Reason and morality, he wrote, were central to creating good states and upright, peaceable communities guided in all their ventures by social justice for all people, without exception.
Implied in his words, was that good constitutions are antidotes to bad governance and people should develop the courage to call out bad governments for what they are, without restraint.
South Africa comes from a dark past dominated by injustices stemming from racial prejudice and supported by laws emanating from racist parliamentary sovereignty dictates.
This is to say every piece of legislation, however oppressive, was rubber stamped and became part of the country’s statutes without being subjected to judicial review — a mandatory requirement in our new constitutional order.
The country’s past apartheid framework, which manifested over a period of more than 300 years under the rubric of colonialism and imperialism, was bolstered by discriminatory laws.
The liberation struggles were a direct reaction to the prevailing cruel system of governance — a prototype upon which all evils of injustice coalesced and, in the words of Masaryk, could not be justified by reason or morality.
Is it not, therefore, strange that some of the architects of this monstrous edifice were theologians, many of whom trained in philosophy and law?
Broederbond is an Afrikaans word meaning “brotherhood”. It refers to a secret Afrikaner nationalist organisation, with a history deeply intertwined with the rise of the National Party, Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid.
The political struggle, waged by all the people of South Africa, including the ANC, Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, Azanian People’s Organisation, Black Consciousness Movement, Unity Movement, the South African Council of Churches, Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, South African Communist Party, and white liberals and trade union organisations of all shapes, sought to destroy the evil system.
But what are we to do? How do we overcome narrow-minded racist tendencies bordering on hate? Those that defy the age-old promptings that we all ought to be our sister’s or brother’s keepers?
If we think of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and his unbounded hatred of black people, the Jews and the gypsies, we wonder what might have entered his mind to have acted the way he did nearly 90 years ago.
History tells us the Nazi regime under Hitler used devious methods to control the German population. It created a police state manned by the Gestapo Geheime Staatpolizei, or state secret police, to control the thinking of communities.
Because he was head of the Third Reich, or Third Empire, it was an obligation to follow his instruction to the letter, and all the thinking of the population had to be uniform, in keeping with his command. All of this was contrary to what South Africans enjoy today — a constitutional democracy granting freedoms to all of its citizens.
The unsettling thought of what might happen if the Nazi Party dogma were to emerge in our own society always lurks in the dark.
Would coups be another way of displacing our constitutional architecture, in light of the strongman mentality that seems to be taking root in our politics?
When society produces the politics of “strongmen”, driven by tribalistic and nationalistic inclinations, it might be treading on dangerous ground — and feeling unsafe.
When political leadership is usurped by strongmen with nationalistic and populist inclinations, the country must begin to be concerned, and coups become a distinct possibility.
In Hitler’s world, power was centralised in his person, and his word became “the highest law”. He was a cult leader, in his charismatic style of leadership and exertion of complete control over his subjects, including manipulation.
Life, in every century, throws at us complexities which we often do not anticipate, some of which are overwhelmingly difficult to fathom.
If you take former president Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe you will notice he was initially a good man, keenly interested in the well-being of the suffering masses. He felt duty-bound to orchestrate an armed struggle to fight off the oppressive system in his country.
But years later, after freedom was attained, how do you square the circle to justify Mugabe’s acts of injustice, turning the heat on the very same people he had liberated?
The Matabeleland massacre is an example.The terror campaign in the early Eighties, often referred to as the Gukurahundi massacres, must be the darkest period in Zimbabwe’s post-independence history, especially considering it was under a black leader who himself had suffered injustice at the hands of the white regime in the old Rhodesia.
Why would a liberator turn the guns on his own people, with more than 20 000 civilians dying at the instigation of Mugabe’s Fifth Brigade?
In the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the position of president has never been contested. The president, Julius Malema, is always returned to power uncontested.
This, too, ought to be a worrying sign for democracy and constitutionalism.
The explanation for the way in which things have panned out at the EFF is always convoluted, never justified by reason or logic, or coming out of the mouths of those who speak on its behalf in a plausible and straightforward way.
Malema has remained uncontested president for the past 12 years, since 2013.
At uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), former national president Jacob Zuma, who is head of the party, has been cagey about internal democratic processes and the need for his party to hold a national elective conference to choose, in a democratic way, its leadership.
The MK party seems to be his personal fiefdom, where positions, such as that of Floyd Shivambu, are dished out willy-nilly at his behest. Apparently, the inner circle “elected” him as secretary general of the party.
This shows the “strongmen” mentality reigns in the MK party.
And what is the final word?
True democracy does not thrive, and is stifled, when leadership gets elected “uncontested” and undemocratically, presumably by a cabal of a few handpicked people somewhere in dark corners where “trusted friends converge”.
Properly defined, a constitution is a foundational document; it outlines how a country ought to be governed. It spells out fundamental principles, rights and duties — and this ought to cascade down to political parties when transacting their business, for South Africa is a constitutional state.
The Constitution is a legal framework. It defines the structure of the government, the powers of its different branches, and the relationship between the state and its citizens.
In the final analysis, its very existence is to serve as a binding contract between those in power and those subject to it, ensuring accountability, among other things.
In the end, the Constitution speaks to us all as citizens of the country to help us to strive to build ethical communities wherever we live, and to live according to moral values consistent with values of the Constitution.
Multiple studies have amply demonstrated that “cult leadership psychology” entails manipulation to gain control over exploitable followers.
Exploitable people are rife among the poor who might be seeking solutions to their own problems of poverty and misfortune. Poor communities are vulnerable, and among them, it is often easy to plant a sense of dependency and obedience and to suppress critical thinking.
To extend the logic, think of the huge sums of money — running into the millions — used by political parties to purchase T-shirts and food parcels for “our people”.
We might ask, “What psychological impact do these gestures of ‘generosity’ have on the minds of the gullible receivers of the goodies?”
When they go to the polls on election day, will the receivers of freebees remember the parties that offered them T-shirts and food parcels, and in a quid pro quo manner, return the favour?
This must speak to inducement, rather than free will, determining the outcome of an electoral process.
Further to elucidate the problem of the “strongman” phenomenon in politics, ANC stalwart and veteran, the Reverend Frank Chikane, in his book, Eight Days in September, chronicles how former president Thabo Mbeki was removed from power before his term ended, with “strongmen” playing a hand in it.
Many small men of little significance were open about the fact that they were prepared to die for Zuma, the “strongman” of the ANC at the time, to have Mbeki vacate his position, and that failing to do so might result in a coup.
Mbeki lost power because “strongmen” who were prepared to stage a coup were ready to do so had Mbeki not heeded the call to step down as president of the country.
And so, in the end, reason and morality, Masaryk wrote, must continue to be central to creating good states and upright and peaceable communities, free of “strongmen” and irregular electoral processes.
Jo-Mangaliso Mdhlela is an independent journalist, a former trade unionist and an Anglican priest.