Deflecting from failure

South Africans should cease the practice of elevating stupidity to the level of controversy.

During the last elections, President Jacob Zuma said something lame along the lines that the African National Congress will govern until the second coming of Christ. People, especially Christians, were up in arms about it. This year, true to form, he said something along the lines that only those who vote for the ANC will gain a ticket to heaven.

As a practising Catholic, I didn’t really feel offended by these comments. I was just embarrassed by the realisation that we have entrusted high office to such a character. Which is why I’m surprised by the controversy it generated.

I could not even understand the aim of the South African Council of Churches in requesting a meeting with the president. Even if he were to relent and apologise, what purpose would that serve? Mr Zuma has time and again shown that he does not place too much importance in what he says. There’s a yawning gap between his words and deeds.

For one, he keeps telling us how his government is fighting corruption, nepotism, and so on, yet his family and friends are just about the only people getting obscenely rich while most of the people are sinking ever deeper below the poverty line. So I don’t take anything the president says seriously.

Who I find rather more pathetic are the defenders of Mr Zuma’s utterance, especially those from the religious fraternity.

We’ve grown accustomed to people within the ruling alliance demonising and calling anyone who does not agree with them “counter-revolutionary”, especially if that critic is black. Whoever criticises the ANC is depicted as unpatriotic.  They want to dogmatise our social conscience through forced assumption and a repressive collectivist mentality.

This rude meddling in people’s intellects, attempts at brainwashing methods of social management, is a fascist attitude and has no place in a democracy. The resultant effect is the snowballing perplexity and indignation from the public which looks with disgust at the loss of values born of the Zuma era’s pompous degradation of ideals that mocks everything we’ve struggled for.

There is a moral and religious bankruptcy in trying to coerce people to vote for the party based on the promise of heaven or fear of hell. This was the colonialist attitude; abusing God as a useful tool of political exploitation. It was despicable in the missionaries, and is even more despicable in the hands of the so-called liberators.

The Zuma administration patronises our people with these colonialists manoeuvres. Indeed, it looks like the pigs have really taken over the animal farm.

Of course, what Mr Zuma might be doing when he evokes his brand of amateur theology is to deflect from his government’s performance.

Shortly before Mr Zuma became South Africa’s president there was public agitation about lurking dangers to our democracy: disrespect for the rule of law and encouragement of eyewash and bribery, servility, and glorification impotence.  Nothing the president has done since has managed to convince us that we are on a different path now.

There has been no effective effort to bar dishonest, pushy self-aggrandising people from positions of power (in fact the opposite has been the case). There have been numerous attempts at suppression of criticism and free expression, and the general gradual erosion of ideological and moral values. A parasitical attitude towards public office is now the norm.

Studies after commissions were made of our economic and social positions, but the results have been superfluous, repetitive paintwork over cracks designed to produce padded reports that go nowhere. Since he came to power the principles of justice have been distorted and eroded by empty sloganeering. And there’s general retardation and stagnation in higher government to refine the mechanism of our economic and social management.

To answer all of this, JZ tells the nation that only those who have ANC membership cards will go to heaven. And the ANC’s secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, thinks this is revolutionary.

Do they have any idea about what constitutes a revolution? A revolution is about resolute and radical elimination of outdated modes, methods and obstacles hindering progress in social and economic development. In short it is about leaving behind passé attitudes.

A revolution is happening and accumulating out there alright, but it is not what Mr Mantashe and JZ have in mind. This revolution is not prompted nor fostered by paralysing officialdom, incompetence, attitudes of careerism and other selfish needs that define today’s politics.

It is inspired by true revolutionary conscience which has realised that 17 years later the majority of our people are still suffering chronic poverty.

It is inspired by courage, initiative, high ideological standards, moral purity, and by commitment to ideals and values inherited from the authentic quest for freedom and the renewal of our society.