A second Look
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela
There are many troubling questions raised by Sipho Seepe’s article (“Where are the so-called leaders?” September 21 to 27), not least the question of the extent to which fear has paralysed those in leadership and silenced them from speaking out against some of the indefensible statements made from the president’s office.
Perhaps more disturbing is Seepe’s equating of the government’s leadership with Mobutu Sese Seko’s dictatorial style.
And this should give us pause. We are supposed to be the “miracle” country, not one of Africa’s inevitable stories whose future lies in some dark abyss of squander, death and destruction. But let’s listen to Seepe; he may have a point.
There is a great chasm between the heroes whose role in dismantling the evil system of apartheid Seepe describes so elegantly (the heroes who were “driven by ideals of freedom, who looked forward to being delivered from tyranny, from injustice, from fear … and indignity”), and the people who are now in positions of power, making decisions about how society should be ordered.
It seems to me that this identity shift has led to a great disconnect between the former heroes of the struggle and the people whose cause they were fighting. Fuelled by outrage at apartheid’s oppression, our heroes were determined to risk their lives for the communities with whom they shared social oppression under apartheid, to lead them to a life of freedom from poverty and servitude.
Now in government, the freedom fighters have a certain distance from some of the injustices that gave rise to their noble fight. They have the privileges they fought for but they have not always acted with sensitivity to the needs of the underprivileged who live in crowded conditions in our townships and informal settlements.
What went wrong, Seepe asks?
My own view is that the issue is not so much the silence evoked by the president’s missteps within government leadership, nor is it a lack of skills among those appointed to lead the country. The problem is a lack of compassion (a quality whose existence has continued to shape Nelson Mandela’s leadership) in our government.
I see this as one of the central issues of the post-apartheid South Africa. Speaking from a comfort zone, our leaders have distanced themselves from the moral urgency of the problems that deeply affect the majority of South Africans. How else can we understand the allocation of billions of rands to an armaments deal and the padding of politicians’ pockets, when so much is needed to relieve the misery that many black people faced under apartheid, and continue to face today?
The problem of our time is not a lack of skill in government. It is, I think, the dearth of outrage at the misery that is so clearly visible, a lack of human compassion, lack of imagination, of ingenuity and of courage. I’m sure not all apartheid leaders entered the government with any special skills. Yet they lived up to their promise of rising up with their people; they successfully dealt with the poor-white problem by putting in place a vigorous affirmative action programme for whites, gave every white child free primary school education and, most importantly, created jobs and uprooted white people from poverty.
We need leaders who can reclaim the sense of outrage that fuelled the ability to fight for the oppressed, not leaders who are blinded by the comfort that power brings.
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is a visiting scholar at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge and is adjunct professor at both Harvard University and Wellesley College. Her book, Have I Ever Killed Any of Your Friends or Family? will be published next year