Zuma must up his game
I feel pity for Msholozi. Media, analysts and opposition parties are up in arms about the shallow, dull, uninspiring State of the Nation address read by our president on the 20th anniversary of the release of Nelson Mandela.
But we seem to forget a few things. Jacob Zuma is not Nelson Mandela or Thabo Mbeki or even Kgalema Motlanthe. We forget that Mbeki wrote speeches himself and was really chief executive of the government, an economist and a scholar in many fields. Mandela, like Mbeki, surrounded himself with the ablest intellectuals, people such as Professor Jakes Gerwel and Joel Netshitenzhe. Zuma’s office lacks speechwriters of the calibre of Dumisani Makhaye, one of the finest propagandists produced by the ANC.
If his speeches are written by Collins Chabane, Vusi Mona or Vusi Mavimbela, then I am not surprised by the low standard. Unlike his predecessors, Zuma is not a visionary leader. We seem to expect too much from him. A good underground operative, a schemer, a populist and a charmer, but not a statesman, strategist, unifier or a skilled manager like Mbeki.
Those who worked with him when he was MEC for economic affairs in KwaZulu-Natal will bear testimony to this: he was always 100% chaotic. He never reads his speeches attentively. God knows why he insisted on including the name of Irvin Khoza. Was he panicking as a result of the Sononogate scandal? He read ‘informal settlement” as ‘information settlement”, ‘DBSA” as ‘Absa” and ‘dedication” as ‘declaration”.
Leading government requires managerial skills more than charm and the ability to sing revolutionary songs. Government is complex. During the struggle various people played different but complementary roles. Mandela was a charmer, a bulldozer and a campaigner. Oliver Tambo was a unifier, Walter Sisulu a strategist and Govan Mbeki a theoretician. Zuma blundered in allowing Netshitenzhe to leave the presidency. With the departure of Mbeki and Pallo Jordan from active politics, only Netshitenzhe and Motlanthe are solid, organic intellectuals.
Zuma is out of touch with himself. Populists rely on promises. He had to glorify Madiba to attract attention. He had to say ‘2010 is a year of action”, but his speech did not contain any action. Within 24 hours, the media were told that the performance contracts of ministers were going to be secret.
Zuma has to be rescued for our sake. Those around him must guide him. He cannot be allowed to continue singing uMshini Wam’ when his speeches lack substance and conviction. Msholozi, you don’t have to quote Marx or Shakespeare, but you do have to up your standard. — Shirley Mtolo
I watched the State of the Nation speech. Let me summarise.
The first 20 minutes were taken to greet all important people (yes, it took that long). The next 20 minutes comprised the annually repeated, age-old speech about victory in 1994 (mentioning it is okay, but we’ve got to stop living in the past). The next 15 minutes were about tackling crime, service delivery, education, new jobs created and broad-based black empowerment. The last five minutes were devoted to thanking everyone who came.
Conclusion: The objectives to do with the five issues raised in the 15 minutes were to get us back to where we were in 1994.
What a ‘state of the nation” after 16 years! While the masses moan, they will again vote for the same party. They moan that democracy isn’t working, but they don’t use their votes to change their lives. — Peter Mpofu, Pretoria
The reign of individualism
February 11 will always be a day that resonates with all South Africans. On that day in 1990 our nation began to exit from dark inhuman days and to enter an age of hope. Madiba personified that long journey. His perseverance and conviction were transmitted to all our people in South Africa. Despite the doomsayers, we taught everyone that together as a nation, united in our diversity, we can realise our dreams of reconciliation, nation-building and reconstruction.
Now we all enjoy equal freedoms and protection, our economy is in a far better state than 20 years ago, access to education and health has improved, more houses have been built, water and electricity reach many who had no access before and our infrastructure, built to cater for less than 15% of the population, has been expanded. Economic opportunities are being given to many who were excluded.
While we are proud of these milestones, we should admit that on our way we unleashed demons that still haunt us. Our collective resolution has failed on leadership, crime, corruption, HIV/Aids, Zimbabwe and race relations. We have allowed individual greed. These demons have rendered our youth so useless that the only thing they look forward to is flashy stuff and more flashy stuff, no matter the human cost.
In Mandela’s twilight years we, as young people, must live up to his expectations and rescue our country from this demonic spell. We have to refuse patronage and material promises, political careerism and tenderpreneurialism. We have to rise against the deceit and lies that sustain illiteracy, crime, immorality, corruption, disease and poverty. Young people of all colours, shades and preferences have to stand up and reclaim our hope for a better life for all. — Tumelo Mlangeni, Spruitview
Twenty years of freedom have not brought us much. But the fault lies not in freedom, but in our understanding of it. Most often freedom is expressed as individual sovereignty. In reality it is social, and relative. A struggle for individual freedom often amounts to a struggle against the freedom of others.
We have all tried to defend our individual freedoms or interests. The white (now black) upper and middle classes seem to believe that the huge imbalance in wealth and education can be righted without a substantial sacrifice of personal lifestyle or culture.
Meanwhile, black South Africans often advocate the inherent benefits of African traditions and hierarchies but deny the reality that traditions have always been contested and hybridised with foreign customs to benefit society.
The protection of individual interests has further splintered our society into isolated networks that defend their turf, while seemingly oblivious to the plight and value of other groups. Freedom as individualism has inhibited our awareness of an interconnected destiny and the need for a substantial sacrifice of individual freedom to invest in wider networks based on relative freedom. However, forcing this change will only encourage protectionism; instead, we need to pursue individual and collective reform in which we rethink our understanding of freedom. — Paul Plantinga, Johannesburg
Why pick on Goldstone?
In his comment ‘A Sad Case of Bad Faith” (February 5) Trevor Norwitz accuses Richard Goldstone of bad faith for his report for the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza that is a ‘travesty of justice”. Norwitz, like both the president and prime minister of Israel, senior Israeli Cabinet ministers and Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard, lays the blame on Goldstone as if he were solely responsible for a report that condemns Israel (and to a lesser extent Hamas) for conduct constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity.
This is far from the truth. Goldstone was chairman of a four-person panel, comprising three experts in human rights and humanitarian law and a military expert, appointed by the UNHRC. This panel was assisted in its fact-finding by a large staff of experienced lawyers and researchers from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The ‘Goldstone Report”, as it has come to be known, comprises the unanimous conclusions of the panel.
The report is one of several that all find Israel (and to a lesser extent Hamas) responsible for having committed serious violations of international humanitarian law in the course of Operation Cast Lead. These reports include the report of the Martin Commission, established by the UN secretary-general to investigate attacks on UN premises in Gaza (in response to whose adverse findings Israel has paid some $10-million in compensation); the report of a six-person commission established by the League of Arab States, with experts from the Netherlands, Norway, Australia, Spain, Portugal and South Africa (I chaired that commission); and reports by highly respected NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights and the Lawyers Guild. Moreover, the findings of the Goldstone Commission are endorsed by Israeli and Palestinian human-rights NGOs and Israeli soldiers who have acknowledged that the usual rules of military engagement were not followed in Operation Cast Lead.
Of the above reports the Goldstone Report is the most comprehensive and for this reason the most damning. Still, it must be emphasised that many of the attacks on civilians and civilian property carried out by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are examined by all reports and all find Israel responsible for violations of international humanitarian law amounting to war crimes or crimes against humanity.
So it is wrong to single out Goldstone for special attention and vilification. He is one of many fact-finders who visited Gaza in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead and reached similar conclusions. Undoubtedly the fact that Goldstone is Jewish has made him particularly vulnerable to criticism. But shouldn’t it be a matter of pride to Jews that a Jewish lawyer was prepared to conduct such an inquiry? Goldstone was not criticised for his investigation into the activities of the security police in South Africa in the early 1990s on the ground that, like most members of the security police, he was white. Why then should he be criticised as a Jew for having investigated the conduct of the IDF?
Norwitz complains that Goldstone has pursued a vision of international law in which no state is above the law and in which civilians caught up in armed conflicts will be protected by the law. But surely this is a vision to which all decent people should aspire? For Norwitz it seems that Goldstone’s crime is that he has sought to hold both Israel and Hamas accountable for crimes against innocent civilians. This displays an ignorance of developments in international law which seek to hold political and military leaders accountable for violations of international humanitarian law, as illustrated by the trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the indictment of Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir. Why should the leaders of Israel not be held accountable in the same way? — John Dugard, Professor of Law, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria
In brief
How can a commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the release of Nelson Mandela be turned into an ANC rally at the gates of Victor Verster prison? It should be a non-political, national, reconciliatory celebration, not a party-political scoring opportunity. — Theo Martinez, Johannesburg
What the president does with his private parts is his private business. What is of public concern is whether or not he grants his wives and girlfriends the same freedom to have multiple husbands, partners and lovers, because this will reflect his attitude to that equality enshrined in the Constitution, which he is sworn to uphold. Will he please give us an indication of where he stands on this matter? — John Brodrick, Johannesburg
The M&G has run numerous ads for the Bonitas Medical Fund for new members. The principal officer of the country’s third-largest medical scheme has resigned and its board of trustees is expected to resign after the scheme became the subject of a court application to place it under curatorship following irregularities involving millions of rands of members’ money. (See the report by Laura du Preez in Pretoria News.) I wonder what the advertising authorities would have to say to the M&G? — Lyn Andreou, Pretoria