Our ‘doing God’ election

Alastair Campbell, a senior adviser to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, made famous the term “We don’t do God” during a British election campaign. “Doing God” refers to the crass use demagogue political parties make of religious institutions for electioneering purposes.

Almost all South African political parties “do God” during election campaigns. The ruling party even went as far as identifying the ANC, without irony, with messianism, with its leader compared to Christ.

Naturally, most Christians found this distasteful, if you measure the reaction of established churches. But the non-established denominations were strangely fascinated by this, confusing it with a self-generated sense of cultural emancipation. Needless to say, the theological implications are ignored, or deliberately flouted.

Most of the leaders of established religions have come out to condemn the embedded corruption that seem to be dogging our government institutions. In particular, the Catholic bishops of Southern Africa have written letters protesting against the failing standards of our government in curbing corruption, in the Nkandla, Gupta, and other scandals.

Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu came out strongly, in declaring that he would not be voting for the ANC this time around. It attracted the usual fracas, with Tutu being accused of becoming reactionary.

But that didn’t take away from the fact that vulgar materialism and crassness seem to be the major driving forces behind our political canvassing, a far cry from the political founding fathers, most of whom were men of the cloth inspired by good Christian values.

All you needed to do was to observe who dominated during the entertainment at major rallies—half-naked people singing crude songs that have no meaningful educational qualities.

Albert Luthuli, with his characteristic studied absence of guile, was of the opinion that when the steady hand of moral virtue is no longer on the tiller of the political ship, it veers off course. I am willing to bet that OR Tambo, himself a man of the cloth, was of a similar persuasion. Even Mandela.

The disjunction between our dominant politics and good values is one of the strange phenomena of our modern democracy, taking into consideration that virtuous political acts are what bore them. Nevertheless, signs are that the ship of the liberation movement is not just wandering off course but is about to run aground while its leaders are dancing on the deck.

For now, most people still have difficulty breaking with the psychological and historical holds on us. But more heads are slowly appearing above the parapet, like Archbishop Tutu, Ronnie Kasrils and Barney Pityana—even some who still prefer to shout from the inside, like Ben Turok and Pallo Jordan.

They fool themselves, those who think the problem is just with President Jacob Zuma, and not with those who elect him, or the system that allows the likes of Zuma to rise so high.

It’s once again going back to our prophetess Nongqawuse syndrome: because you cannot deal with contemporary challenges, you blame everything on external factors, while fatalistically self-destroying. The problem with us is that we are underlings, to use Shakespearean language. We allow our ruler to abuse us in our name.

The Catholic Church, under the reign of Pope Francis, is entering an epoch of what is termed the revolution of tenderness and mercy. Like most revolutions it champions and gives voice to the oppressed towards a more democratic and holy reform.

The Church in our country will need to add vigilance against the erosion of good values and against the predominance of political arrogance.

She is once more called to be the teacher, not only of religious conscience, but of our social one too. For the truth of the matter is that, as we believe in Christ’s teachings, to serve God is to lead people into the light by giving them power to make informed decisions that will bring about their true emancipation. Now that is the true meaning of “doing God”.