Cadres appear to have sold themselves for 30 pieces of silver
NO blows BARRED
Sipho Seepe
The 1994 democratic election brought to an end centuries of racial and colonial domination of the continent. Credit is due to the men and women who defied and overcame extreme repression and dehumanisation. They heroically suffered mental and physical torture, imprisonment, banning and exile, and some paid the ultimate price. Driven by ideals of freedom, they looked forward to being delivered from tyranny, from injustice, from fear, from hunger, and the indignity associated with deprivation.
The African National Congress discharged itself honourably during its first term of office in building a framework for the realisation of these ideals. It was with this sense of idealism that the party was returned to office with an overwhelming mandate, but indications are that these hopes and expectations are misplaced. The absence of intellectual and political engagement suggests that South Africa is sliding towards dictatorship.
President Thabo Mbeki’s recent attempts to de-emphasise the HIV/Aids crisis are a case in point. To bolster his claim that Aids is not the leading killer in South Africa, Mbeki disingenuously referred to six-year-old World Health Organisation statistics on HIV/Aids. One would have expected ANC members to join the expression of outrage at yet another Mbeki denial of the seriousness of Aids especially in light of the fact that South Africa has the highest and fastest growing infection rate in the world.
To resort to outdated statistics to direct government spending is an act of intellectual desperation. Expectations were that someone with intellectual and scholarly pretensions would seek the most recent information available. Such is Mbeki’s contempt for expertise that he disregards advice from some of the best scientists and institutions in the area.
Mbeki insults the intelligence and integrity of those who look to him for leadership. The silence from the (dis)honourable members of the ANC is a reflection of either their intelligence or their moral integrity. Worse still, it could also be a reflection of the paralysing fear that Mbeki has managed to instil in the organisation. How else can we explain the silence from those who pride themselves on having faced the might of apartheid? Mbeki has achieved what apartheid masters had failed to do. Whereas 300 years of apartheid colonialism failed to suppress the quest for freedom, including freedom of expression, it took Mbeki two years to achieve this. Talk of a miracle. It is little wonder he treats the ANC and the rest of South Africa with contempt.
Consistent with the above is the manner in which Mbeki dealt with a perceived political challenge to his presidency. To pre-empt this, earlier this year he hinted at a plot against him and encouraged the abuse of state resources. The alleged plot, implicating senior ANC members and based on a questionable source, proved to be nothing more than a paranoid strategy aimed at ensuring that his presidency remain unchallenged. It is ironic that someone who projects himself as a democrat, and exhorts others to respect democratic practice, resorts to such devious tactics.
The silence from members of the ruling elite also reflects an intellectual incapacity a result of a historical abdication in which the responsibility to think was left to the party leadership. This incapacity was glaringly evident when ANC parliamentarians sycophantically cheered Mbeki on as he ridiculously declared that “a virus cannot cause a syndrome”.
Intellectual incapacity also explains the ease with which the ANC has successfully kept members in check by simply invoking the notion of “democratic centralism”. Democratic centralism tends to prevent the decentralisation of political power. It makes a mockery of people-centred and people-driven democracy. If anything, invoking democratic centralism to repress dissenting views exposes the ANC leadership’s poor understanding of what democracy entails. The prevailing understanding limits the public role of ANC members to parroting and singing praises to the leadership. Any deviation from this is dealt with harshly. This facilitates the imposition of decisions from the centre while keeping in line those who question.
It is mind-boggling that, while paying lip service to the virtues of democracy, members of the ruling elite enthusiastically support a system of government that is little different from that of Africa’s leading despot Mobutu Sese Seko. In each case the leader selects government appointees (Cabinet ministers, director generals and premiers), who in turn select their appointees (MECs), giving him total control of provincial and national administration. Driven by insecurity and obsession with control, Mobutu and Mbeki ensured that administrators and Cabinet members are kept on the move from post to post so that none could establish a firm power base. No one held a position in government other than through presidential grace. Having created a network of loyalists at all levels within the ANC a majority of whom have been deployed in strategic positions within state institutions, for example the police, intelligence and the army Mbeki has virtually isolated himself from external challenges and pressures. Since most of the deployees are his creations, they have since come to identify their future and interests with him. They exist to serve him.
This invariably invites a number of questions how did we get here? What silenced the so-called “tried and tested cadres”? How do we explain that those who defied torture, imprisonment and the threat of death itself have been reduced to mere minions?
A less benevolent interpretation is that a majority of the so-called “tried-and-tested” cadres have sold themselves for 30 pieces of silver. This may explain the present uncritical endorsement of the multibillion-rand arms deal in the face of pressing social demands. The scramble for political office, with beady eyes on material benefits, has replaced political idealism. For many, bereft of any skills and education, this is the only and shortest escape from extreme destitution.
Since merit is the least consideration, many are not prepared to risk the loss of their newly acquired status by raising their voices against corruption, incompetence and abuse of office. Instead they have built an arsenal of excuses to explain away their political and moral bankruptcy.
This is to be expected, as Steve Biko put it: “Tradition has it that whenever a group of people have tasted the lovely fruits of wealth, security and prestige it begins to find it more comfortable to believe in the obvious lie … In order to believe this seriously, it needs to convince itself of all the arguments that support the lie.”