Wake up, wake up Shakespeare and tell us, “we are in this world ; where to do harm is often laudable; to do good, sometime accounted dangerous folly”.
Were circumstances in Shakespeare’s Macbeth as bad as they are in South Africa today, he would surely be excused for conjuring up Lady Macduff’s damning deceit.
Alas, ours is exactly a scene in which folly is egged on and its engineers celebrated, despite the dangers befalling the family.
This is not as it should be. Parents should set a good example to children. They should act in their interests. By the same token, a head of state should be exemplary to the nation he leads.
Should he be deviant, his deviance, like cancer, will eat into the moral fibre of society – that’s obvious.
What may not be so very obvious is that this deviance will manifest itself in the various habits of the nation he leads.
Would an alcoholic father wait until all his children, boys and girls, are alcoholics before he feels guilty about his deviance? Of course not. So it is that so many people, ANC supporters and rivals alike, indict our president for setting a bad example.
Not that everyone would build a Nkandla and claim innocence. Not that everyone would face that many criminal charges and bury their head in the sand like an ostrich.
Not that everyone would boldly address parliament in the face of the Constitutional Court judgment and blame those who then react. And not that everyone, with a straight face, would say Africa bewails people’s behaviour, save his own.
No! But when a president does exactly that and when he ignores all caution, deviance makes itself at home in society.
It manifests in rampant crime, corruption, preferring rands and cents to rationale and sense, poor education and woeful results, rising teenage pregnancy, a dwindling economy, the list goes on.
These are the consequences of harm being lauded.
And so a pattern is set. One in which the more scandals my president is accused of, the louder the deception of his praise-singers and the greater his grip.
What that says to students of logic is that he must do more of the same to continue within his stronghold.
But enough of that. Never in the history of South African politics does so much seem to have been said, by so many, to so singular an individual.
Notice my own deviance of quoting Winston Churchill without acknowledging him!
But this article is actually about my own party, my African National Congress. The party that deployed my president. I remember that it is the branches of this party, not the national executive council, not the top six, who hierarchically elected my president in Polokwane in 2007.
And it was I who elected him. There are those who say I should have looked into his educational qualifications, as happens in countries such as the US. But I elected him constitutionally.
Indeed, we were a multitude who elected him.
But what happens when such a deployment becomes suspect?
A host of 250 able-bodied ANC MPs vote on our behalf, “thou shalt have him”. Period!
These are princes and priests, queens and harlequins, chiefs and chefs – we have consciously elected to parliament.
And because they have to vote together, they must think alike.
Exeunt MPs; enter the ANC Women’s League, true to Shakespeare’s dictum, “Life is ... a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.”
Mothers of our nation, without delving and detailing the merits of the case, unanimously resolve that my president is going nowhere.
Women are known for empathy and an eye for tomorrow . They know all of us from as early as 10 days in our traditional birth huts .
But nothing apparently has said to these women that they must first test the waters before making this grand announcement. Nothing has reminded them that they are governed by their branches so that this announcement must be a result of democratic consultations.
Satirically perhaps, the only justification for the ANC Women’s League’s lack of inimba is that they are not alone.
Joining the fray is the youth, ostensibly Sasco of KwaZulu-Natal, who throw their weight behind the ANC MPs – this even before the division in which they will be boxing is announced.
The youth is the future of our country – this school of thought and temple of reason is true of all time. The question therefore must be, is the youth promising us that they, when they ascend the ropes of government, will behave like my president?
“Youth I do adore thee; Age I do abhor thee,” said the unknown sage. But have we rather degenerated to Jolobe’s times: ungqino lwempazamo lugqib’othingazayo, afulathel’ingqiqo ngelize .
This, Jolobe wrote, when he mourned the myth of Nongqawuse, who instigated the killing of cattle and the burning of mealie fields.
Of course, all is not gloom and doom. On the credit side of this account we see the ANC veterans arguing rationally that it is time my president is recalled.
They have compared his tenure to that of ANC presidents before him and have found him wanting – in almost biblical proportions. The response? A rebuff that makes you doubt they were ever revered.
Whatever happened to ilizwi lomntu omdala alidliwa mpuku ?
As for church leaders, you see them now, or you don’t see them.
Like the proverbial phoenix. My ANC government needs them now, they don’t need them now.
How often have we heard our politicians rightly beseeching the clergy to dirty their hands in the campaign to fight crime and other societal evils?
Rightly so, because God’s work is to be done out there, on the sports fields, in the shebeens, at night parties, in the taxi ranks.
But when the same clerics act in line with their ecclesiastical calling and suggest how the government should behave, they are redirected to the pulpit as their only province.
Surely there is no such thing as a right to pick and choose?
Politics and religion are so interwoven as to be inseparable. Ask Karl Marx and if he is too far removed geographically and in terms of epochs, ask Father Mangaliso Mkhatshwa.
No wonder that a man of unbridled conscience, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, lamented: “You and your government do not represent me. You represent your own interests”.
Quo vadis South Africa?
It is my innermost view that the ANC needs cleansing before going to the local government elections.
To achieve this, regardless of accompanying rituals, we need to apologise to the people of South Africa for the unwise and blind-folded support we have given to our president.
Only when we begin to do this will the people who have turned their backs on the ANC have a re-think.
Professor Mncedisi Jordan was on the staff of the University of Fort Hare and Walter Sisulu University, where he taught and supervised accountancy students. He now researches indigenous cultures
Apologise for Zuma folly
Were circumstances in Shakespeare’s Macbeth as bad as they are in South Africa today, he would surely be excused for conjuring up Lady Macduff’s damning deceit.
Alas, ours is exactly a scene in which folly is egged on and its engineers celebrated, despite the dangers befalling the family.
This is not as it should be. Parents should set a good example to children. They should act in their interests. By the same token, a head of state should be exemplary to the nation he leads.
Should he be deviant, his deviance, like cancer, will eat into the moral fibre of society – that’s obvious.
What may not be so very obvious is that this deviance will manifest itself in the various habits of the nation he leads.
Would an alcoholic father wait until all his children, boys and girls, are alcoholics before he feels guilty about his deviance? Of course not. So it is that so many people, ANC supporters and rivals alike, indict our president for setting a bad example.
Not that everyone would build a Nkandla and claim innocence. Not that everyone would face that many criminal charges and bury their head in the sand like an ostrich.
Not that everyone would boldly address parliament in the face of the Constitutional Court judgment and blame those who then react. And not that everyone, with a straight face, would say Africa bewails people’s behaviour, save his own.
No! But when a president does exactly that and when he ignores all caution, deviance makes itself at home in society.
It manifests in rampant crime, corruption, preferring rands and cents to rationale and sense, poor education and woeful results, rising teenage pregnancy, a dwindling economy, the list goes on.
These are the consequences of harm being lauded.
And so a pattern is set. One in which the more scandals my president is accused of, the louder the deception of his praise-singers and the greater his grip.
What that says to students of logic is that he must do more of the same to continue within his stronghold.
But enough of that. Never in the history of South African politics does so much seem to have been said, by so many, to so singular an individual.
Notice my own deviance of quoting Winston Churchill without acknowledging him!
But this article is actually about my own party, my African National Congress. The party that deployed my president. I remember that it is the branches of this party, not the national executive council, not the top six, who hierarchically elected my president in Polokwane in 2007.
And it was I who elected him. There are those who say I should have looked into his educational qualifications, as happens in countries such as the US. But I elected him constitutionally.
Indeed, we were a multitude who elected him.
But what happens when such a deployment becomes suspect?
A host of 250 able-bodied ANC MPs vote on our behalf, “thou shalt have him”. Period!
These are princes and priests, queens and harlequins, chiefs and chefs – we have consciously elected to parliament.
And because they have to vote together, they must think alike.
Exeunt MPs; enter the ANC Women’s League, true to Shakespeare’s dictum, “Life is ... a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.”
Mothers of our nation, without delving and detailing the merits of the case, unanimously resolve that my president is going nowhere.
Women are known for empathy and an eye for tomorrow . They know all of us from as early as 10 days in our traditional birth huts .
But nothing apparently has said to these women that they must first test the waters before making this grand announcement. Nothing has reminded them that they are governed by their branches so that this announcement must be a result of democratic consultations.
Satirically perhaps, the only justification for the ANC Women’s League’s lack of inimba is that they are not alone.
Joining the fray is the youth, ostensibly Sasco of KwaZulu-Natal, who throw their weight behind the ANC MPs – this even before the division in which they will be boxing is announced.
The youth is the future of our country – this school of thought and temple of reason is true of all time. The question therefore must be, is the youth promising us that they, when they ascend the ropes of government, will behave like my president?
“Youth I do adore thee; Age I do abhor thee,” said the unknown sage. But have we rather degenerated to Jolobe’s times: ungqino lwempazamo lugqib’othingazayo, afulathel’ingqiqo ngelize .
This, Jolobe wrote, when he mourned the myth of Nongqawuse, who instigated the killing of cattle and the burning of mealie fields.
Of course, all is not gloom and doom. On the credit side of this account we see the ANC veterans arguing rationally that it is time my president is recalled.
They have compared his tenure to that of ANC presidents before him and have found him wanting – in almost biblical proportions. The response? A rebuff that makes you doubt they were ever revered.
Whatever happened to ilizwi lomntu omdala alidliwa mpuku ?
As for church leaders, you see them now, or you don’t see them.
Like the proverbial phoenix. My ANC government needs them now, they don’t need them now.
How often have we heard our politicians rightly beseeching the clergy to dirty their hands in the campaign to fight crime and other societal evils?
Rightly so, because God’s work is to be done out there, on the sports fields, in the shebeens, at night parties, in the taxi ranks.
But when the same clerics act in line with their ecclesiastical calling and suggest how the government should behave, they are redirected to the pulpit as their only province.
Surely there is no such thing as a right to pick and choose?
Politics and religion are so interwoven as to be inseparable. Ask Karl Marx and if he is too far removed geographically and in terms of epochs, ask Father Mangaliso Mkhatshwa.
No wonder that a man of unbridled conscience, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, lamented: “You and your government do not represent me. You represent your own interests”.
Quo vadis South Africa?
It is my innermost view that the ANC needs cleansing before going to the local government elections.
To achieve this, regardless of accompanying rituals, we need to apologise to the people of South Africa for the unwise and blind-folded support we have given to our president.
Only when we begin to do this will the people who have turned their backs on the ANC have a re-think.
Professor Mncedisi Jordan was on the staff of the University of Fort Hare and Walter Sisulu University, where he taught and supervised accountancy students. He now researches indigenous cultures
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