Sometimes we need to write things down for no reason other than that those who come after us can marvel at how bad a place we found ourselves in as a country. So here is my record of the manifest hypocrisy of our leaders this past week.
Tourism minister Lindiwe Sisulu last week told the nation that her boss, President Cyril Ramaphosa, was lying when he said that she had apologised for insulting the judiciary and attacking the constitution.
Where in the world do a leader and his organisation — in the private or public sector — allow such brazen insubordination to stand?
In the same vein, where in the world does a self-respecting cabinet member continue to report to someone whom they consider a liar and have named as such in public?
It took Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi, in her address to the ANC national executive committee lekgotla, to say succinctly what Ramaphosa and his senior comrades had failed to say explicitly to Sisulu: “If comrades are tired, then they must leave.”
The continuing Ramaphosa-Sisulu fiasco underlines the question that many of us have been asking for four years now: at what point does Ramaphosa admit that his strategy to keep the ANC united has failed?
For four years he has accommodated and mollycoddled the “radical economic transformation” faction (largely made up of everyone implicated in state capture by the Zondo commission, plus a few Johnny-come-latelies such as Sisulu) while its members have had no qualms about insulting, undermining and destabilising him and his administration.
Throughout this period Ramaphosa and his allies have told the nation that he is turning things around slowly, building up support within the party, and that a time will come when he acts. Four years later, none of that has happened.
At what point does Ramaphosa admit that his strategy to keep the ANC united has failed?
Instead, the state he leads and the country we love seem to be under attack: fires at air force bases and parliament; burglaries at whistle-blowers’ houses; nasty attacks on journalists and the judiciary; and all sorts of other nefarious activities.
Even by Ramaphosa’s own reckoning, the ANC is imploding and taking us all down with it. On Sunday he even used the word “crisis”, saying: “Divisions and factions in the ANC are themselves a threat to our democracy. Regression of ethical and moral leadership has resulted in what I would call a crisis. Our credibility and legitimacy are being undermined by our inability to act.”
This is an assessment that many of us made as far back as 2007, when the party elected a court-dodging, dissembling, populist securocrat as its leader. Fifteen years later, that “regression of ethical and moral leadership” has brought the party and SA to their knees.
The essential problem with Ramaphosa’s obsession with keeping his party united these past four years is that to achieve that goal he had to compromise on the “ethical and moral leadership” he speaks about.
The unity proposition came with an accommodation of those who supported or were key to state capture. It failed to answer, honestly, the question raised by Thabo Mbeki at a meeting of the party’s leadership earlier this month: “When we talk about unity in the ANC, who are we trying to unite? You can’t say that we must unite ordinary members of the ANC with criminals.”
To that end one must ask what Ramaphosa and Sisulu were thinking on Sunday when Ramaphosa told the nation: “The ANC and the alliance reaffirm our support for the constitution, the Bill of Rights and the judiciary, and distance ourselves from narratives that seek to negate its transformative intent and gains.”
Well, we know that Sisulu does not support our constitution, that she believes that it does not serve the interests of black people and that the judiciary is made up of “mentally colonised ” blacks who she so disrespects that she called them by the vile slur of “house n*****s”.
Surely this paragon of virtue should not serve in a cabinet whose constitution she doesn’t believe in unless what she wants is to undermine and destabilise that institution? Does Ramaphosa still believe in uniting with those who denigrate our constitution?
History will judge him, and us silent citizens, very harshly.
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