OPINION: Politics of politicking often proves hollow simplistic ideological rhetoric

Given the fortunes of post-independence Africa, perhaps the great Pan-Africanist and first president of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah was naive when he said “Seek ye first the political kingdom and all else shall follow”.

You see, sometimes one gets the sense that, as Africans, we have excelled on the politics of politicking, but less on the politics of reality diagnosis.

By the politics of politicking I really mean the tendency to over-invest debate and public discourse around the machinations of party political contestations and the overemphasis of ideological bickering.

This is when ideology becomes an end in and of itself rather than a mere conceptual framework to interrogate reality.

It is notable for example, that the leader of the newly formed South African Federation of Trade Unions Zwelinzima Vavi stated on the radio station 702 this week that he “cannot sleep at night for making Jacob Zuma the president”.

It is commendable of course, that Vavi can own up to a mistake publicly. It is worth reflecting then on the fact that Zuma was dressed up as a working-class, left-wing hero who was anticipated to deliver South Africa it’s “Lula Moment” – a term coined by Vavi back when he was the leader of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, referring to apparently successful economic reforms of Brazil’s former President Lula da Silva.

Of course, South Africa has seen nothing close to a “Lula Moment”. Instead we find ourselves with a situation where our very national sovereignty may have been breached at the highest echelons of government.

Back in the days of the “Lula Moment” rhetoric, it was not always easy to publicly question whether Cosatu’s rhetoric had any substance, particularly not for those of us active in civil society spaces.

There was just this assumption that if the trade union federation said something, then whatever was said must be given unquestionable popular purchase.

This is what I call the politics of politicking – when the details of socioeconomic reality are subsumed into rhetorical phrasing and deeper questions about the realities of our political and economic systems, which are put aside.

The real trouble is that we have to recognise that words and theory are no substitute for dynamic reality.

Yet often, in South African politics, one gets the feeling that all that matters are the words and not the actual actions.

A young person I know attended a Marxist workshop a while back. Upon his return, he was perturbed by how obviously un-Marxist the very lifestyle and intent of the people involved in the workshop were.

It was clear it was just a job they were doing because there was funding. All that mattered was their rhetoric.

You see this happen a lot at universities, where you get professors who profess to be diehard anti-capitalist socialists, while they in fact demand the highest salaries, send their children to the best suburban schools and terrorise secretaries in their departments.

Yet again, all that matters for their credentials is that they speak and write the right radical-sounding rhetoric.

Now, all this is fine and well, except that when thought leaders and scholars distract us with useless rhetoric, the public discourse is impoverished. We now sit here years later and have powerful leaders like Vavi asking themselves how it was that they could not see past the charms and displays of humility of President Zuma.

Well, whether they could see past the charms or not is not the actual issue. What is at issue is whether you, regardless of who is in power, are asking the difficult questions about the problems of society or are you simply throwing about simplistic ideological rhetoric?

Rhetoric may work well so that you can be identified as a political radical but it does very little to deal with the content of the contradictory problems facing the poor majority.