Today when he ascends the podium, President Jacob Zuma will be well advised to get into the meatiness of what lies ahead for the party, and by extension, the state, writes Don Makatile.
Today when he ascends the podium to address the throngs of ANC supporters likely to fill up Orlando Stadium in Soweto for the 105th anniversary celebrations, President Jacob Zuma will be well advised to ditch his trademark populism and rhetoric to get into the meatiness of what lies ahead for the party, and by extension, the state.
The January 8 statement has traditionally been a harbinger of good news for the governing party and those it leads. This cardinal importance of the statement cannot and should not be allowed to degenerate under Zuma’s watch.
He has already repeated his blasphemy of the party staying in power until the dawn of the Second Coming, when he spoke to the party faithful on Vilakazi Street (Soweto) on Friday. It will not help him or the party to conveniently forget how Jesus was “seen” in the Nelson Mandela Metro Bay area when the ANC dismally lost the municipality to the opposition DA in the August 2016 local government elections.
It has lately become a subculture of the ANC to live in cloud cuckoo land and believe their own lies. The party kicks off this year of its elective conference in December with the theme “Unity
in Action”.
It is only those, and they are many inside the ANC, who can begin to think there’s even a semblance of unity in the party at present. Whatever mirage they see is of anything but unity.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa hit the nail on the head when he told those gathered to commemorate the 22nd anniversary of SACP stalwart Joe Slovo’s death at Avalon Cemetery that the party was riven with factionalism: “Our movement is riddled with factions and even leaders are leaders of factions.”
None are so blind as those who refuse to see and this is becoming the signature of ANC cadres. They refuse to see the writing on the wall.
They still think it is a travesty of justice that the voter woke up in the August polls to see through the ineptitude of the governing party.
President Zuma himself continues to prove a liability to the party - and a gift to the opposition - each time he gets a platform to speak.
When the sane world has taken note of the emergence of the voice of reason within the party, as represented by the 101 Veterans, for example, Zuma takes to the stage to single out Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Andrew Mlangeni as “the real veterans of our movement, not those other ones”.
Each time he speaks off the cuff he gets totally off the script. You do not lead a once-glorious movement by misleading those pliant enough to be swayed by your words.
In Friday’s speaking engagement, Ramaphosa warned against “bad leaders [who] don’t listen” and “think they know it all”.
It is not rocket science who this was aimed at, especially when Ramaphosa said this in isiZulu.
President Zuma has sadly come to represent the worst departure from the norm of ethical leadership those like Ramaphosa remember of Slovo and other departed stalwarts of the liberation struggle.
Today the president gets another opportunity to salvage what remains of his tattered reputation and rise to the occasion as befits an incumbent at the helm of the ANC, the so-called “leader of society” as secretary-general Gwede Mantashe is wont to refer to the party of Tambo, Sisulu and Mandela.
President Zuma needs to grit his teeth and talk tough against corruption even when naysayers will laugh and remind him of the Gupta family.
State capture is not a figment of former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s imagination.
It is real, not a perception as Mantashe has lately acknowledged.
President Zuma needs to take us into his confidence and say how “the leader of society” is going to deal decisively with this cancerous scourge in the new year.
He must tell us what the party’s plans are regarding the nepotism eating away at state-owned enterprises at which some of his acolytes are sowing mayhem.
The ANC is nothing like the movement founded in 1912 by honourable men and women whose sole mission was to deliver the oppressed from the heavy yoke of colonialism and apartheid.
It has become a party of corruption and patronage.
In his last January 8 statement, President Zuma has the chance to write his name boldly in the pantheon of the great leaders of this once-glorious movement.
The ball is in his court.