Prophet Barney Pityana needs an urgent psychological therapy

From a deep sleep of nightmares with many skeletons from his cupboard Barney Pityana has awoken to write a letter to the President of the ANC and our Republic Cde Jacob Zuma calling for his resignation. He is warning our President on an impending catastrophe for the country if he does not heed to his prophetic confessions. What has indeed come to be is that Prophet Barney Pityana needs urgent psychological therapy (see here). 

One of the paragraphs of his prophetic letter to the President of our Republic reads thus "i cannot go along with the idea that leadership does not matter, neither do I accept the notion habitually bandied about in the ANC, that leadership is by collective. There can be no collective without a leader, inasmuch as there cannot be a team without a captain. A so called " collective leadership" strikes me as mob rule".

In his collected works the inflammable material in world politics Vladimir Lenin would say" the  historical tasks of our revolution are not being-per formed by the forces of counter-revolution, and cannot be. The Russian bourgeoisie are necessarily gravitating more and more towards the international anti-proletarian and antidemocratic trend.

It is not on liberal allies that the Russian proletariat should count. It must follow its own independent path to the complete victory of the revolution, basing itself on the need for a forcible solution of the agrarian question in Russia by the peasant masses themselves, helping them to overthrow the rule of the Black- Hundred landlords and the Black-Hundred autocracy, setting itself the task of establishing a democratic dictator ship of the proletariat and the peasantry in Russia, and remembering that its struggle and its victories are inseparable from the international revolutionary movement.

Less illusions about the liberalism of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie (counter-revolutionary both in Russia and the world over). More attention to the growth of the international revolutionary proletariat".

The open letter to the President of our movement and the Republic by prophet Pityana is an illustration of the extent to which counter revolution in our country, is gradually gravitating towards undemocratic tendencies. Counter revolution under the stewardship of the Democratic Alliance is negating its own alleged core values, of inner party democracy and therefore as a result democratic rule in general. Counter revolution is gradually opposed to the principle of majority rule in a democracy.

I agree with his prophetic confession that there can be no collective without a leader inasmuch as there cannot be a team without a captain. In our instance we have the collective which is the leader of our national democratic revolution. The people of our country, the black people in general and the africans in particular have a captain. Our national liberation movement the ANC is the leader of our people and the people are the leaders of our liberation movement. Our revolutionary weapon is the high levels of unity and cohesion of our movement and the people.

Therefore what Prophet Pityana has to comprehend is the scientific notion that the unity of our national democratic revolution is the unity of our people. The collective leadership of our national democratic revolution is the people and the leader is the ANC and at the same time the collective leadership of our revolution is the ANC and the leader is the people. There is no scientific formula that can provide a solution to separate milk and sugar from the delicious cup of tea.In other words the revolutionary struggles led by the ANC are inseparable from the struggles of our people. 

These historic traditions and culture of the ANC of collective responsibility have over the years protected our movement, from serious mistakes such as nourishing personality cult on individuals and autocratic style of leadership. It is therefore an antithesis and a peculiar phenomenon that counter revolution can appear in a form of Barney Pityana today and accuse the President of the ANC for not having created an autocratic leadership around himself. It is interesting that artificial ambassadors of democracy and human rights are gradually becoming allergic to the fundamental values and principles of inner party democracy. 

It is true that we do not have the luxury of listening to the prophets of doom such as Barney Pityana. We have an immediate colossal task at hand to take forward the struggles for the socio economic transformation of the living conditions of our people. We have an unparalleled task of taking forward the objectives of our historic mission,of building a new national democratic society out of the foundations of apartheid colonialism. We need to build on the unity and cohesion of our movement and our national democratic revolution.

Our revolution is passing through a litmus test of separating wood from chaff. The vacillating counter revolution is day by day isolating itself from the strategic focus of our people. Our national democratic revolution needs men and women capable of exposing the inconsistency and flaccidity of the enemy against the unity of future of our people. Vacillation by agent provocateurs who are at work to undermine the successes  of our revolution is inevitable. Our people must resist the growing sentiment of distrust, despondency by those who have chosen to betray the cause of our revolution 

We are not at all astonished by the posture of what it presents itself as the coalition of opposition parties and some self proclaimed intellectuals, such as Barney Pityana and Mamphela Ramphele, who are determined to destroy the foundations of the unity and cohesion of our people. What history will never forgive are those amongst the black people in general and the Africans in particular, who are still hellbent, under the conditions of the post colonial dispensation, to report to the voice of the colonial master. 

We categorically reject the growing tendency by counter revolutionary forces in our country to separate the President of the ANC and the Republic from the collective leadership of our movement. The decisions the President of our movement and our Republic take on a day to day basis, represent the collective views of the leadership of the ANC and its general membership across the breath and length of our motherland. The attack on our President by the unholy alliance of opposition parties and pseudo intellectuals under the auspices of the DA, is the attack on the revolutionary program propelled by the ANC led government to accelerate the socio economic transformation of our society.

Some of the posture these people take of perambulating with the DA is not just a laboratory fault. The mistakes you commit in natural sciences are easy to rectify, you easily retrace your steps and procedures but the mistakes you commit in social sciences are difficult to rectify. They form part of the legacy of nations. Therefore the postures some of the people take today against our movement and its leadership is of coarse consistent with their dubious historical past. They served the master yesterday and they will serve the master today and tomorrow.

Phatse Justice Piitso is the former Ambassador to the Republic of Cuba and the former provincial secretary of the SACP writing this article in his personal capacity.

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