The ANC and its alliance partners have often been described as a family. Families can evoke the deepest love from which courage can emerge against great danger. They can also cause bitter feuds and vengeful hatred.
This month, when Polokwane is on our minds, it is also the time of Christmas holidays, family gatherings and the worst period of domestic violence and suicides. In the ANC family, vengeful hatred has spewed forth from the two camps supporting the big men of South African politics — Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma.
Many, believing that the wisest thing to do is to keep working to build our society, have kept their heads down and focused on whatever it is they do best. And there is so much work to be done to create employment and end poverty; to create peace and to end all forms of violence; to ensure the right to decent healthcare and to stop the spread of HIV/Aids. United, all the talent, skill and experience within and outside of the ANC can overcome daunting obstacles.
Last week, while the ANC Women’s League met, I attended the first global meeting of parliamentarians on HIV/Aids. The theme of that meeting was leadership, and in arguing that parliaments must act to ensure affordable medicine, I addressed Mahatma Gandhi’s comment that we must be the change we want to see. It is the most challenging call to any of us and, like Gandhi, we will fail again and again. But it is a call that we must return to if we are to build and not destroy our country.
The ANC developed a powerful model of leadership that guided it through dark days. Walter Sisulu refused position, status and wealth, demonstrating the power of love and courage within each of us and in united collectives. It is the kind of leadership that exists in every single one of us and that can unite us in transforming South Africa.
During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, many ordinary cadres spoke of all that they had lost during the struggle against apartheid — far more than all the personal indignities and loss of power that drives the battle for president. Their wisdom to prevent bitterness and hatred engulfing their hearts was simple: ”There is no time for hatred. We have children to bring up.”
This love and courage cannot be dishonoured as leadership is reduced to big men who manipulate the genuine concerns of the poor to suit their ends. The South African Communist Party and trade union federation Cosatu cannot pin the agenda of the poor on either big man. All of us know that, to a greater or lesser degree, both big men have used women for their own expedient ends. The ANC’s Women’s League has voted for one of these big men — a national leader who, during his trial for rape, inspired and did not rebuke his supporters’ public demonstrations of hatred of women, hatred of Xhosas and homophobia.
It is time, my sisters, to be insubordinate to both big men. The women of our country must respect their power and act now.
We will be labelled ”unstrategic”, as I was when I used my power to speak for women, who are poor, who have HIV/Aids and who live with violence; in refusing to be the ANC’s ”woman speaker” at the launch of Gear; in chairing hearings on HIV/Aids in 2001; and taking a stand at a time of silence in the ANC caucus and voting against the arms deal.
If you operate within the paradigm of the big man, your words and actions will be ”unstrategic”. The battered women who return to their abusers see no alternative. In this month of no violence against women, we have many alternatives. On the lists of both camps there are powerful women who can be president, with whom we must all work with to ensure no repetition of the errors of policy or personality of the big men.
And even for Zuma and Mbeki, it is not too late. They can help each other to step down with dignity, to unite our movement and our country.
It is time for every citizen, including every ANC member, to be insubordinate to the power of fear, hate and greed. Talk to your family, talk to your friends, use your power, now.
Pregs Govender is the author of Love and Courage: A Story of Insubordination