There were media reports last week on a plan afoot on the part of the South African
Council of Churches (SACC) and its
leadership to send a delegation to meet parliamentarians, including the Speaker, to prevail on them to vote against the president and therefore bring the government to a halt.
The SACC is of the view that it has resorted to these public actions as it was ignored by the ANC leadership when it called for special meetings with the ANC top six. According to it, what broke the camel’s back was when it finally got a meeting and only three members of the ANC top six were present.
It was insulted by what appears to be insubordinate behaviour of the top six, because did the top six not know that when the SACC leaders demand a meeting it is supposed to occur. According to SACC general secretary Bishop Malusi Mpumlwana, the SACC wanted to do everything it could to avoid embarrassment to President Jacob Zuma.
Mpumlwana argues for the dissolving of Parliament over the Nkandla saga. He goes further and remonstrates that, regardless of the outcome of the vote of no confidence, the clergy was duty-bound to caution officials presiding over a sinful government, otherwise they would be party to the sin.
Reading this piece one cannot but have a zillion questions for the SACC and its leadership.
The SACC recently publicised what it believes constitutes its legitimacy in that it is the biggest Christian church organisation in SA. It appears it uses this as its base to direct the political matters of SA in regard to the ANC.
One struggles to see a coherent argument on the part of the SACC as to why it believes it is the ordained entity to direct the ANC in its political choices for leadership.
Let us be honest, the SACC that was once the surrogate womb of our liberation became irrelevant in
the latter season of the Thabo Mbeki era.
By the arrival of 2009, it was buried when Zuma chose independent Christian church fraternities, in what appears to be against the SACC.
It was clear that Zuma’s presidency redefined the religious political economy of SA and that choice did not include the SACC.
If the SACC leadership is honest it will tell us that’s where its war with Zuma started.
As it teetered in irrelevance it sought to find a means to resuscitate itself in 2012 when it approached the independent churches for financial aid. It is therefore not far-fetched to argue that the SACC leadership had personalised its fight with the ANC and SA president because it felt disrespected by his choice not to go with the SACC as his predecessors, to varying degrees, did.
You will recall a crucial time when Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu attempted to direct and instruct the ANC with Mbeki in leadership how scathing the latter was in calling Tutu a charlatan, and not an ANC member who could direct the ANC.
Zuma’s biggest weakness has been his tolerance for being personally abused.
It didn’t start today. Tutu and Reverend Barney Pityana were just as insulting about Zuma’s ascendancy to the highest office. They vented their personal as well as SACC associated views. Zuma did not retaliate. Instead, when someone asked him why he was not responding, he answered from a traditionalist and cultural base which he argued did not afford him the right to rebuke elders.
Yes, Zuma did at some stage ask the clergy to remain clergy or enter the realm of politics. This may have stirred the ire of some in the SACC leadership who have their own personal political ambitions to lead SA. We therefore cannot be misled to assume the SACC’s stance is purely neutral - it attests a complete bias and politically laced stance.
The SACC under bishops Ziphozihle Siwa and Mpumlwana has become a runaway train of personal attack and conflated claims of religious and political power. It is a one-dimensional leadership usurped and obsessed with a convenience of regime change as its fundamental mandate.
It is less concerned with the social and moral dilemmas that transcend the political arena, and has labelled all this as owing to the political leadership of Zuma. If it is conveniently silent on SA and its anomalies, it has no voice on religious abuse of church members by questionable pastors, etc. When it does respond, it wants to be the final authority as well as the gatekeeper of the Christian faith in SA.
So politically driven has the SACC leadership become that it recently convened a so-called unburdening exercise where it used penance as a means to solicit confessions for a political agenda - the removal of the president.
The case can thus be made that the SACC - which the masses have entrusted as political leaders of our society - and are acting outside their religious and political scope when they deem it their inalienable right to firstly direct and secondly contest the ANC in political sphere, as illegitimate. It can also be argued that the SACC has no regard for the ANC as an organisation, nor its structures and branches, and, fundamentally, its voters.
The SACC, in the spirit of the 101 veterans, considers itself the authority to instruct the ANC using bullying tactics. The SACC furthermore attempts to use blackmail in tackling a sinful government, this when the clergy forget the multiplicity of their own known sins, which they easily forgive among themselves but struggle to find space to do for others.
It has now vowed to lobby the members of Parliament, including the Speaker, to vote against its president come August 8.
Clearly the SACC is seeking to be a political player hell-bent on the removal of the sitting ANC president whom it has made the devil responsible for all SA’s problems.
It is obvious that the SACC has a political agenda framed against the ANC and its leadership, seeking the dissolution of Parliament at any costs. Perhaps it is time the SACC became an official political party that contests elections and has its own candidate up for consideration. After all, it claims it has the numbers.
This concerted and orchestrated attempt to bully the ANC and disrespect ANC branches, leagues and structures and its leadership warrants a public rebuke. The SACC cannot be allowed to be a political player dressed up in cassocks of religion, when it has no presence in society except in aiming for a president’s removal.
The ANC must engage the SACC, no longer as a religious entity, but a political entity.
* Bishop Clyde Ramalaine is a columnist and political analyst.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.