We+should+rejoice+at+Zuma+victory,+Kaizer+Nyatsumba,+S+Times



=We should rejoice at Zuma’s victory=


 * Kaizer Nyatsumba, Sunday Times, 23 December 2007**

//Polokwane sent out many important messages//

Through its overwhelming rejection of President Thabo Mbeki and those close to him, the ANC has sent a number of critical messages to the country and the continent.

Yet again, the ANC, the oldest liberation movement in Africa, has offered an example worthy of emulation.

What are these messages? The first is a timely reminder to those in senior positions that they do not have an inalienable right to rule. Instead, power resides with ordinary members of the organisation, to whom it rightfully belongs. It is the people who, through an election, delegate their power to a chosen leadership, for it to use that power responsibly between elections, and to account to the self-same people for the judicious use of that power.

The lesson is simple: get drunk with a sense of self-importance and look down upon the rank-and- file members who put you in that position of power, and you are history. The people will take that power back and cut you down to size. That is what happened to Mbeki, Mosiuoa Lekota and Company in Polokwane this week. These leaders had committed the fundamental error of looking down upon ANC members and treating them with disdain.

Consistently, over at least two and a half years, ANC members had sent a message to the ANC leadership. They did this at the organisation’s National General Council in 2005 and National Policy Conference in June this year, and through nominations for this week’s national conference.

The message was simple: we do not trust you any longer, and we think that you are abusing state resources to victimise Jacob Zuma and others you do not like.

We think that you have become power-drunk and arrogant, and we would like you to step down at the end of your term and walk away with dignity. (The second most popular song at the conference in addition to Umshini Wami was Awudedele abanye, awudedele abanye, awudedele uMsholozi, which means “Give way for others, give way for others, give way for Msholozi”.) Regrettably, that message went unheeded, hence the electoral humiliation.

The second — and most important — message sent by rank-and-file ANC members to their own organisation, the country and all of Africa is that they do not want South Africa to become yet another typical African country, where leaders overstay their welcome and become presidents for life.

While there are many who voted for Zuma because they believe that he is the right man for the job, others who supported him were voting more against Mbeki rather than for Zuma. Helping to propel the Zuma tsunami, therefore, was deep antipathy towards Mbeki and resentment of his desire to hold on to the ANC presidency.

Many other South Africans felt the same. At the airport in Johannesburg, the SAA employee checking me in on a flight to Polokwane told me to “come back with a new ANC president”.

When I explained I was a business guest at the conference, not an ANC delegate, he said that while he would have preferred Cyril Ramaphosa or Tokyo Sexwale for the ANC presidency, if he were a delegate he would be voting for Zuma to avoid a situation where South Africa ended up with a “president for life”.

Clearly, then, the ANC — as well as the country — has learnt well the lessons taught to us by many other countries on the continent: that is, presidents and parties must come and go, and not become a permanent feature.

My view, clearly shared by the majority in the ANC, is that Mbeki was wrong and ill-advised to stand for a third term as ANC president. And, once he had stood, he was wrong and ill-advised to remain in the contest until the very end, thus suffering the kind of defeat that he did. Some of us would have preferred to remember him for the many things he has done for the country, not for his humiliating rejection by his own organisation.

Clearly, Mbeki had no confidence in Zuma or in any other ANC leader, and considered himself indispensable. His intention was to continue to rule the country by remote control from Luthuli House, with whoever he would have chosen to run the country taking instructions from him. After all, as president of the ruling party, he would have been in a far stronger position than the president of the country, whom he would have assigned.

Such a situation would have not been good for the country. It caused chaos in Namibia and Malawi. This is why the ANC members had pronounced, at their National Policy Conference, that they would “prefer” a situation where the president of the organisation was also president of the country.

The lame excuse repeatedly given by Mbeki, that he was merely responding to the wishes of those who had nominated him, did not wash with me.

Surely the man can say “No, thank you”, just as Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi did when he was nominated for the National Executive Committee?

Had Mbeki retained the ANC presidency, most likely some of his supporters would have been heard, late next year or early in 2009, suggesting an amendment to the country’s Constitution so that Mbeki could serve a third term as the country’s president. Would he have agreed to that because “the people” want him and he can’t disappoint them?

There is absolutely nothing that says because you have been asked to do something, you have to do it. Better logic is expected of those considered to be intellectuals.

The third message sent by the ANC delegates to the country is that, however highly the institution thinks of itself, the Fourth Estate has no influence on delegates’ voting patterns. Over about two and a half years, Zuma has been presented in the media as a joke and a bumbling idiot, with much made of the fact that he is not a university-educated intellectual.

Despite his apology to the country (in fact, the mere ability to own up to some wrongs and apologise is a tremendous commendation) following his trial — and subsequent acquittal — for alleged rape, Zuma has continued to be lampooned in the media, repeatedly cartooned with a shower over his head.

Yet none of that made a difference. In fact, together with the bluster from various Cabinet ministers and other people in government, following the ANC Women’s League’s narrow decision in favour of Zuma, this worked in his favour. After all, the instinctive human reaction is to rally around the underdog.

The fourth message from Polokwane is that democracy means the will of the people, not the will of the elite. However much some detested the decision by a narrow majority of the ANC Women’s League to come out in favour of Zuma, the fact remains that it had been the outcome of a democratic process.

The people who had attended the Women’s League nominating meeting had applied their minds to the situation and voted the way they had done. To have insults heaped on such people, with the unseemly spectacle of people in Mbeki’s Cabinet gleefully joining in, revealed a worrying understanding of democracy.

When are democratic decisions accepted — only when you agree with the outcome? That sets a dangerous precedent.

This anti-democratic practice, and the concomitant abuse of state resources (the SABC, for instance) as well as the planting of damaging rumours about Zuma, worked against Mbeki in the end. ANC delegates saw through it all; it strengthened their resolve to vote for Zuma and bring an end to the unedifying spectacle.

At Polokwane, many in the Mbeki camp and the media repeatedly presented Zuma’s vocal supporters as undisciplined. Why? Just because they had strongly signalled their lack of confidence in the Mbeki camp by booing them or singing when they spoke? Sure, that was embarrassing, but it was an expression of freedom of speech. When people boo the prime minister and shout at him in the British Parliament, the oldest in the world, they are seen as exercising their freedom of speech and they are not said to be undisciplined.

Clearly, times have changed and many things have happened, leading to the practices to which the organisation is unaccustomed. It is important for the organisation to acknowledge the new reality and to seek to harness it rather than reject it.

In conclusion, two thoughts. His failings and weaknesses notwithstanding, Mbeki has done a lot for the country. It is important that we acknowledge that. That is why some of us would have preferred to remember him fondly.

Secondly, the country can — and should — draw a lot of encouragement from what has happened in the ANC. Its essence is this: that internal democracy in the ANC is alive and well. This is something to be celebrated, especially since there is no opposition party worthy of the name in South Africa. This means that real opposition exists within the ANC itself.

This is vitally important, because it means that ANC members have regained their voices and will never again keep quiet when they see things going wrong. That is fundamentally in the country’s best interests.


 * A former political editor, newspaper editor and political analyst, Nyatsumba is a senior business executive in Johannesburg. He writes in his personal capacity


 * From: http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Insight/Article.aspx?id=667327**

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