Led by the worst party president of them all, power-hungry and ultra-greedy scoundrels are betraying the noble ideals of the real ANC, writes Elvis Masoga.
Some false "Gucci" revolutionaries and rapacious demagogues projecting themselves as ANC leaders are strangulating and condemning the ruling party to an early political grave. The shameless pseudo-revolutionaries have appropriated the power to usurp hegemony and hold the ANC hostage.
Hiding behind a veil of Struggle credentials, the rapaciously corrupt charlatans are an embarrassing antithesis to the true ANC culture and tradition. Led by the worst party president of them all, Jacob Zuma, the power-hungry and ultra-greedy scoundrels are betraying the noble ideals of the real ANC of Langalibalele Dube, Pixley Ka Isaka Seme and Sefako Makgatho.
Zuma inherited, from iconic presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, a resilient and formidable revolutionary movement. But thanks to Msholozi’s destructive and scandalous leadership, the ANC has morphed into a lifeless caricature of a lived dinosauric behemoth.
The oldest liberation movement in Africa, the ANC has become a free-for-all comical version of Animal Farm. Directionless and leaderless, the 105-year-old movement has become the poor shadow of its revolutionary glory. Ill-discipline, political illiteracy, self-enrichment, self-elevation, a get-rich-quick mentality and false revolutionary consciousness are crippling the ANC's moral fibre.
With Zuma at the helm, the party's timeless revolutionary morality, cadre discipline and selflessness have become virtually non-existent, if not extinct. It is disheartening to observe a party president who is hell-bent on annihilating his organisation. In many instances, institutions and organisations are crippled by external elements and foreign encroachments. But in this classic case, the party leader is digging his liberation movement's grave.
Zuma’s pre-1994 political credentials and sacrifices are inspiring and revolutionary. But his post-1994 political profile is deviously uninspiring and scandalous. In sarcastic poetic linguistics, Zuma personifies “a nation's hero that went on to steal the people's dreams”.
He publicly gives with the right hand but surreptitiously take away with the left. He will give you R2 in daylight and rob you of R500 under the cover of darkness. Zuma has become both a rose and a thorn in the nation's flesh. His Struggle credentials are superb and phenomenal, but his post-1994 political legacy is shameful.
Since Zuma became party president in 2007, cadre discipline and revolutionary morality in the ANC faded into oblivion. The president's carefree demeanour and don't-care attitude infected the whole body polity of the ruling party. Motivated by presidential immorality and delinquency, the ANC membership followed suit and abandoned any semblance of ethics and morals.
Zuma’s 2007 Polokwane victory was a tacit coup d’état against the vintage principles of cadre discipline and revolutionary morality. His presidential fumbles and deranged political psychology was a culmination of the incidental unravelling of the Polokwane Conference.
The conference inadvertently pronounced a death sentence on the ANC, and Zuma was mandated by the gathering to swiftly enforce and implement the penalty. He is executing that unenviable task with military precision. Another factor contributing to the paralysis of the ANC is the application of double standards by its national leadership (Luthuli House).
The self-enriching leaders, particularly Zuma and his stooges, are applying and enforcing party discipline selectively, favourably and mischievously. Classical philosophers of morality argue that discipline and moral etiquette are indispensable guiding tenets of human society.;
No advancement can be made without regard to mental discipline and ethical wisdom. Historically, the pursuit of enlightenment, civilisation and modernisation by humans was modelled on tactical discipline and moral goodwill. All techno-scientific achievements were masterminded by individuals whose moral intention was to bring betterment and civility to society.
Without mental discipline and ethical prowess, our human world would be mired in the primitive dungeons of darkness and wilderness. Without the application of discipline and moral consciousness, human society would be characterised by the “rule of the jungle”. The rule of the jungle denotes the survival of the strongest and the perishing of the weakest. In that undesirable lawless conjuncture, virtues of discipline, morality and mutual respect are non-existent.
Organisations/institutions are also founded on the virtues of discipline and ethical prudence. All organisations expect their members to abide by a constitution, rules, principles, policies and resolutions. Members who deviate and defy organisational rules will be subjected to organisational disciplinary measures. History is littered with examples of members/leaders who were suspended or expelled from their organisations because of ill-discipline.
Recently, while being interviewed on a national radio station, Limpopo ANC Women’s League spokesperson Christina Mehale defied the ANC's standing resolutions.
With delinquent arrogance, Mehale charged that the Limpopo ANCWL is canvassing for Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to become ANC president and that nobody would stop them. That was the purest indication of gross ill-discipline and flagrant defiance.
In January last year, the ANC national leadership barred all party structures from partaking in succession interrogations. Luthuli House pronounced that any member/leader who transgressed that injunction would be dealt with. It is startling to observe that the leadership is dishonest and hypocritical when enforcing discipline. Disobedient members and leaders aligned to Jacob Zuma are never subjected to disciplinary sanctions.
Just recently, ANC Youth League president Collen Maine publicly vowed to boo and disrupt public meetings and rallies addressed by deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa. No disciplinary intervention was effected against Maine.
The ANCYL and ANCWL leaders are dubiously exempted from organisational discipline because they are Zuma’s buffoonery stooges. The application of double standards is tantamount to the abortion of justice. In 2011, Zuma impelled the ANC national officials to proffer undeserving disciplinary charges against then ANCYL firebrand president, Julius Malema.
That was in reaction to Malema’s public pledge to assist opposition parties in Botswana to overthrow president Ian Khama militarily. With immediate effect, Zuma and the national officials laid disciplinary charges against Juju. He was found guilty and expelled from the ruling party in early 2012.
Juju’s disciplinary charges and expulsion were a devious machination by Zuma to remove a major stumbling block from the macro-political equation. Bear in mind that at the time, Malema was lobbying for Zuma's removal as party president before the 2012 Mangaung National Conference.
Coming back to the current political epoch, it is suspicious that Zuma’s close allies are exempt from discipline. Will the national officials institute disciplinary charges against miscreant Maine and the Limpopo ANCWL leadership for inciting divisions and disunity in the party?
Without cadre discipline and revolutionary morality, the ANC is as good as politically dead. Regrettably, in the ANC, cadre discipline means agreeing and acceding to everything Zuma says and does. Doing the opposite would inevitably be tantamount to inviting suspension or expulsion from the ruling party. Malema happens to be proof of that.
* Masoga is a political analyst.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.