President Zuma must not make the mistake of treating the people’s affection for the ANC as mere luck, says Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya.
Pretoria - I can imagine opposition parties gleefully rubbing their hands after President Jacob Zuma’s admission last week that the ANC was in trouble.
What more could anyone opposed to the ANC and recruiting for their own party ask for than to have the head of the party say publicly that his is a sick organisation.
You have to feel for the party’s spin doctors having to explain that the president did not mean what he was understood to have meant.
South Africa will fall apart or succeed not because the ANC is in or out of power, but because the country established institutions that foster conditions for long-term prosperity or failed to do so.
The ability to create a prosperous country or a failed state does not lie with the colours of the party flag. It is not even in the DNA of a particular person or class of people.
One of apartheid’s enduring lies is that skin colour can determine aptitude or proclivity to certain behaviours.
That is why some believe that a state like Germany became successful because it is ruled by people of a certain skin colour, ignoring that the same country was a failed state after World War I.
That is not to make excuses for Africa whose many leaders have let it down over the last 60 years of freedom.
That Africa lags behind even those Asian states that were under the same yoke of colonialism has everything to do with the mentality of the “leaders” and not their skin colour.
It has everything to do with the paternalism as now displayed by Zuma, that only his party could have answers to how South Africa could fulfil its undoubted potential.
Instead of being arrogant about what South Africa could be without the ANC, it might be worthwhile for the head of state to honestly reflect on whether there are systems in place for the longevity of the ANC and the “better South Africa for all” project.
Similarly, instead of licking their lips with excitement, opposition political parties must also reflect on what they would do to ensure that they leavesustainable institutions to take South Africa forward regardless of who is in power.
These things cannot be left to chance.
Stories of individuals who won the lottery but later returned to their pre-windfall days are a dime a dozen. There is a good reason for that.
Sustainable greatness is always a work in progress. Those who take it for granted are almost always doomed to lose their good fortune.
Furthermore, for Zuma to imagine that South Africa will fall apart if it is not ruled by the ANC is to ignore both how the ANC itself came to be the party trusted by the historically oppressed to deliver them from apartheid bondage and what other countries that sustained their greatness did.
The ANC worked tirelessly and selflessly to win the hearts and minds of the millions of South Africans.
The victories in successive elections are a function of long and arduous work between 1912 and 1994.
Zuma must rather reflect on why the ANC has stopped doing what it did to make it what it has been for most of its existence instead of being a doomsday prophet.
He must not make the mistake of treating the people’s affection for the ANC as mere luck.
The ANC did not win the people’s trust in the lottery.
ANC members and supporters have a long list of things that are “unANC”.
These include forwarding one’s name for consideration for a higher office or criticising fellow comrades in public.
The party must ask itself what kind of “unSouth Africa” behaviour it has cultured in the 20 years that it has been in power.
Instead of obsessing with what South Africa would be like under a different party, the ANC should rather focus on what kind of institutions and national culture it would have helped engender from its years in power.
The party must remember that it was formed for a purpose rather than for power. It must remember that power is a tool to the end, not an end in itself.
None of the nine clauses on the aims and objectives of the ANC are about attaining and staying in power.
Another lesson that Zuma has to heed is that of his predecessor – Thabo Mbeki – who was rejected by his own party for what many saw as the arrogance of thinking that only he had the wisdom to sort everything out.
If the ANC loses the humility of knowing that the South African state will endure long after the ANC is out of power and that it is in power not because of entitlement, but because of trust, it might one day find itself as humiliated as Mbeki found himself.
* Follow Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya on Twitter @fikelelom
Pretoria News