President Jacob Zuma Humiliated

President Jacob Zuma Humiliated

It looked as if I had arrived, too early as no detailed programme had come my way, at a rather boring occasion which would just confirm what I already knew. However, I was going to be part of a situation where a person was humiliated in a public way to an extent that I had never experienced before.

The down-town 1970s concrete monstrous structure of a conference centre, Good Hope Centre would easily house around 2500 people and more than an hour before the programme would start it had filled up almost to capacity. The festivity was there for all to see and above all to hear: singing and dancing, groups of women or youth or other categories, all ANC made their way, in turn towards the podium and then back. The volume was high as well as the spirit. What I could not discern was the spirit of dissent which would become apparent at a later point.

On Thursday 23 February, Jacob Zuma, the current president of South Africa, was going to hold the presidential lecture on the second president of the ANC during the years 1917 – 1924, Mr Sefako Mapogo Makgatho. This was the occasion and everything was set for another highlight of the ANC centenary celebrations during 2012, being sent live on television and radio.

Protocol was observed. The family of the late President Makgatho was greeted. Prayers by no less than 7 religious representatives were said, representing Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, African Traditional Religion and Koi San religion. More than one of them used the opportunity to also praise the ANC.

Now Zuma was able to start. It boded well and he managed to give a quotation from his predecessor of the 1910s that could have been the base for tackling some of today’s challenges. The quote, addressed to the current white Union of South Africa leadership, reads: “We do not ask for any favours. This is the land of our fathers.”

However, noting much would come in terms of making this a concrete challenge of today, at least not as far as I could hear.

The thing was that the youth contingent, at the far back on the right hand side seen from the podium, which had earlier on dance-marched up to the stage in an impressive way, and they could have been about 300, started to make noises, gradually louder and louder, consistently, singing, dancing on the spot, singing and shouting. The President continued his speech, as if nothing had happening or was happening. One could understand the predicament, as this also was a live production of the SABC, on radio and television, but after five minutes or more, this became unbearable. People turned their heads, others started to move, and for sure, very few were able to pick up what the President was trying to say. A little later two ANC officials walked down decisively to the youth corner, but the singing rather increased due to this move. A little later the religious contingent, now of more than ten people, all dressed up in their various religious insignia, the African indigenous half-naked and with feathers and spears, made a procession down to the youth corner, also to no avail. The youth seemed elated and the noise did not in any way abate. A little later a scuffle broke out and later we learnt that a journalist who had been shooting with his camera on the group had a chair thrown at him and he had to be taken to hospital.

During these developments the President continued his lecture as if nothing had happened. His body language told all of us that he was totally humiliated. The ANC delegation on the podium the same: they looked absolutely petrified, no one moved. It was gruesome. Only when the lecture was over the President and a lot of others started to address the problem, the youngsters for their obstruction. Apparently they were representatives of the ANC Youth League, whose President (Julius Malema) recently has been banned from ANC membership for the next five years.

It was indeed a historical occasion, for all the wrong reasons. Elsewhere I will much more articulate the fact that the ANC, which is 100 years old this year, is a movement to take note of, to take seriously and I can summarize a much longer discussion by here saying that one should remember that ANC is much more than a political party.

I will here rather prolong my negative reporting by adding on signs, clear signs, that things are not going the right way; and I just then stay with the lecture and the occasion in the Good Hope Centre, the day before yesterday. In all I have six other complaints namely: the role of the church and Christian faith in the life of President Makgatho was not recognised, the National Anthem, when sung, was aborted, a rhetoric of reconciliation was absent, whites were directly or indirectly hung out as the culprits of all sorts and, finally, the ANCYL have not learnt a democratic way of protest. What they demonstrated was populist hooliganism which is totally anti-democratic. What they could have done, for example, was to make a statement of some kind for a minute or less (which would have been to violate a meeting, but nevertheless) and then walked out, rather than demolish, destroy a whole lecture and causing a humiliation that will make it almost impossible to make peace again.

Initially ANC leadership was formed through and by various churches and there would have been no ANC had there not been Christian churches that foresaw that there was a possibility to build justice for all. Typically today there is a brief acknowledgement as to this church back ground and this was also the case in the lecture, as Makgatho had been a lay preacher in the Methodist church and even founded his own church at a   later stage. When elaborating on this church legacy Zuma would only say: all through his life he always remembered the community he came from.

Secondly, the National Anthem was sung, or so I thought, but only the first part was done, Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika and not the second part stemming from the old Afrikaner regime (die Stem). Is this ANCs anthem or was it a deliberate front against white South Africa?

Thirdly, any rhetoric as to a needed reconciliation in the country was totally lacking. What was so striking was that ANC predominantly sees itself as a black African movement and behaves like one; at least at this occasion. There were hundreds of Coloureds there but somehow they were not part of the same celebrations (the dancing and singing). Perhaps 1% was white. It was a long way away from the times of President Mandela and even Mbeki, who indeed had a seriously meant rhetoric of reconciliation, also including whites.

More than hour before the meeting was due to start there were some videos shown on a screen. It was from various demonstrations during the struggle years against the apartheid regime. Whites were also on the screen but without exception police or other officials of the apartheid government. I felt uneasy about this showing as I was the only one who at least looked white in my section of seating. It struck me that at no point were whites recognised for what they have done for the country. As far as I have understood, the whole movement leading to a new South Africa and new democratic elections in 1994 was characterized by this: even though apartheid as a philosophy (theology), ideology, policy and realized politics, was a crime against the blacks (of all kinds) in the country and a crime against humanity, this did not mean that all whites were bad; on the contrary. Whites had also contributed to nation building and a few of them had been valiant fighters against apartheid. “It cannot be that whites have done no good.” The Presidential lecture this afternoon gave an impression to the contrary. The sixth point I have already commented upon.

Two more things should be added. First of all, this inability to address the present, as far as I could hear – after all the ANCYL was in charge for quite a part of the lecture, but their argument, if there was one, drowned in a great noise – was taken care of during question time. A woman in her sixties’ asked about land, and while she spoke, starting in Afrikaans and later carrying on in Xhosa, she became, as so often, totally agitated so in the end she screamed: “they have taken our land and that is why we still stay in places like Khayelitsha!!!”. The President was bound to give an answer, and he said that the complaint was legitimate and that the government was drawing up a “green paper” to re-address the issues of land. He also admitted, and this is very interesting, that there is a linkage between the township phenomenon and the land issue.

Secondly, had I been given the opportunity to talk to the President and put forward my grievances regarding the lack of an appropriate rhetoric of reconciliation he would have consented immediately and said that he in fact found it very essential. Zuma is here caught up in an in-house struggle where he needs to show the right metal and then another sort of rhetoric is needed, which is the one we saw and heard this afternoon in Good Hope Centre. This is the problem; if you are the President of a country like South Africa (and a more difficult job is difficult to imagine), you have got to have some consistency in what you say or do. If you speak live on television you are not only addressing cadres within ANC, you are speaking to the whole country. The current President seems to lack a conceptual framework that is consistent. If the right policy would be to keep all in the nation together, by consistently positively embracing all groups in the country as essential players in the new compensation, then he would have to stick to these guns, consistently, at all times, at all costs; otherwise he would undermine his own position, and that is happening right now. As proof of my suggestion I can only recall his address to the church leaders in the country just over a year ago, here in Cape Town, where he spent at least 15 minutes describing how all groups had and will have a decisive role to play in the new South Africa.

This certainly was a miserable day for President Jacob Zuma, a day of humiliation, but also for the people of South Africa, this young democracy, which rather than this downfall, should grow from strength to strength.