Even veteran despondent
A “VETERAN ANC leader called me last Monday morning, saying “Mkhuseli, hayi iphambene iANC ngoku (The ANC is totally insane now)”. I was still in bed, and he went on to say: Zinyulwe zonke eza ntwana zitye imali ka Mandela (All those boys who [allegedly] stole Mandela’s funeral money have been elected)”. He was referring to the election of the Buffalo City metro ANC regional leadership. He said he couldn’t sleep after hearing the news that Phumlani Mkolo, Luleka SimonNdzele and Sindiswa Gomba were going to be top dogs of the ANC in the region, after being elected over the previous weekend. All three officials are facing criminal charges on allegation of stealing money meant for Nelson Mandela’s funeral. The comrade who phoned me has always been senior to me in ANC rankings. He was one of the people who were never kind to me when I turned my back on the ANC. In the late 1970s and 1980s he served in the Border area, with the likes of comrades Alfred Metele, Joe Mati, Thozamile Gqwetha and others. This time around, unlike other times, when the conversations started and ended with my premature decision to leave the ANC, it began and ended with a deep resentment and disappointment in the antics of today’s ANC. Previously every failure, mistake or excess of the ANC he eloquently defended. He was always blaming everything on mere misunderstanding, and failure by the public and critics to understand the “internal processes” of the ANC. Occasionally, he grudgingly accepted that the ANC did make mistakes, which he attributed to the “lot of good” it was doing. According to him, due to its “gigantic historic mission”, it was bound to make mistakes. However, the election of the officials implicated in the alleged misuse of Mandela funeral money has flabbergasted him and he is not beating about the bush, he is furious. In 30 minutes of listening, I found that he was saying exactly the same things I had been saying for years. Sometimes I used to feel I was being mocked by my political mentor. This time he was just lamenting and feeling brutally betrayed, and in some way saying: “Sorry, my comrade”. This comrade is one of those you can safely classify as a paragon of ANC morality, values and principles. He served on Robben Island twice, and was arrested and imprisoned in all the states of emergency imposed, that is in the 1960s, 1985 and 1986. He is one of few seniors who are so persuasive that after engaging them I sometimes used to develop doubt about my decision to leave the ANC, in the early days. He rehashed the glorious history of the ANC, its campaigns, great leaders from all corners of the country, the gallantry and discipline of its fighters and how that well oiled machine turned the tables upside down to topple the apartheid rulers. He mentioned martyrs of the struggle, Zola Nqini, Steve Biko, Griffiths and Victoria Mxenge, the Cradock Four and the Pebco Three and others, to stress his point.
His emphasis was that most of the struggle was conducted in the main in the areas that fell in what was historically known as the “republic”, outside of the homelands of Transkei and Ciskei. According to him, these areas were the productive centres and the economic hubs of the region. The motor, textile and the agro-processing sectors in the area was the breeding ground for heightened political consciousness, through organised labour, hence activism was at its highest in these areas. This activism explains also the fact that most of the political prisoners on Robben Island came from these areas. Some of these principled and gallant struggle heroes came from the PAC and BCM. The comrade’s gripe is that how is it possible that at the advent of democracy almost 80% of those activists were nowhere to be found in both state structures and organisations. He could not work out how the ANC was left to the stewardship of inexperienced, commercially driven and criminally prone leadership. To him, this leadership has designed a pattern of survival through patronage and deliberately marginalised some of the finest and most competent revolutionaries of the movement. His prognosis for the deterioration of the moral authority of the ANC is the creeping into the movement of activists with Bantustan political culture. That system, he argues, sustained itself through patronage, corruption, and marginalisation of competent and critically minded people. To strengthen his thesis, he uses the analogy of Paulo Freire, in The Pedagogy of The Oppressed: “When a slave is given an opportunity to be in charge of other slaves he becomes more brutal than the slave master”. His reference to managing slaves is a “pedagogy” of the slave master. Unfortunately the current inexperienced leadership of the ANC as well as the bureaucratic caste in control have marvelled at, learnt and mastered the corrupt format of the homeland system, especially in the Eastern Cape. For the record, the three mentioned officials are not the only ones who got rewarded and promoted after the scandal and subsequent resumption of the trial. Others have been sent to the national parliament. Maybe in this saga it is a matter of “more than meets the eye”. Or , is it merely the legacy of Bantustan mentality?
