South Africa has changed. The most radical shift in political sensibility since the country's first democratic general election in April 1994 is already behind us.
The past is past, when there was no real political issue in the country that was not an issue within the ANC: when South African politics was ANC politics, or it didn't really count.
South Africans are now thinking for themselves, outside the box, and there are very different programmes on offer. The National Assembly and the provincial assemblies do not reflect the real language of the people, and are no more a guide to the real world of South African politics than a Bantustan assembly.
In one of those astonishing ways which astonishes the world even as much as it astonishes the country, the booing of President Zuma when he spoke on Tuesday at the global celebration of the life and legacy of Emeritus President Mandela at FNB Stadium in Soweto - the beating heart of Gauteng, the political brain of southern Africa, on the television screens of the world - revealed a revelatory truth.
Deference is gone!
Failed, in front of the eyes of the city which rose up in June 1976 as schoolchildren to tear down the battlements of apartheid - failed, failed utterly, the pathetic royal progress of a President and a party which thought itself was the Nation, demanding deference in all things!
How pathetic were the efforts of this or that cardboard political actor to lecture the people of Gauteng like a schoolmaster about the people's misbehaviour.
All the armed police at Marikana, all the terrifying power of state which took the life of Andries Tatane in Ficksburg and of Mido Macia in Daveyton, evaporated like the morning mist at Cape Town before this Congress of the People which gathered in Soweto to revere the memory of their departed President, in the presence of his successor.
The dead President was alive in the people's judgment of the living one.
How pathetic were the trappings of office, and of ill-gotten wealth, before the People's scorn.
In death, how the life example of the one man shone a scorching light on the self-entitlement of the other
There is no recovery from this. However long it takes, and whatever trials and even horrors might await, South Africa has launched itself into the unknown, as it seeks to find itself in its own thoughts, its own language, in the memory of its departed great Exemplar.
If it needed proof - and it needed none - this came two days later to a British audience (and no doubt a global one, and above all an audience in South Africa too) in the screening of a riveting live debate before a Joburg audience of the TV current affairs programme, Question Time, chaired by its veteran presenter, David Dimbleby, shown on BBC1 in Britain on Thursday night.
Though there were six panellists on the podium, with Dimbleby as chair, there were in fact really only four speakers in this TV debate, which functioned as a live-time Parliament of the People. These four were: Lindiwe Mazibuko, MP, parliamentary leader of the Democratic Alliance (very feisty and articulate); Lindiwe Zulu - member of the ANC National Working Committee, former ANC exile and international advisor to President Zuma (wooden and defensive the whole time, failing to convince a majority in the audience); Andile Mngxitama (Black Consciousness proponent of the September National Imbizo, wearing the red beret of Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters and arguing for state nationalisation of the economy and expropriation of the land without compensation - confident, relaxed, scornful, the principal challenger of Lindiwe Mazibuko).
And the fourth speaker, the greatest and the best - the Audience, themselves.
The weakest of these: by a long way, the spokesperson for President Zuma on this occasion, Lindiwe Zulu, representative of the ruling power in the ANC and the state.
How the discussion zinged! How Ms Zulu was put on a back foot for her earlier comment that "those responsible [for booing President Zuma] will be dealt with."
Shades of Quatro! Rumbling of the Grindstone! But useless... no-one in the audience or the panel was intimidated or silenced, not even for a second.
Andile Mngxitama: the ANC had not addressed the historical land question. Marikana showed that white capital had used the ANC to oppress black people.
Lindiwe Mazibuko: Anger can be turned into a cheap political tool, turning black people against white people. Mngxitama responds by describing Mazibuko (in Malcolm X's phrase) as "a house negro."
Mazibuko: In this language, the word "radical" means "revenge". What will ANC government do about "white collar crime and corruption", especially when committed by those in government?
Old woman in the audience: There has been "reconciliation without reparation".
Young woman in the audience: "What will the ANC do if it is found that Jacob Zuma has used taxpayers' money to build his house at Nkandla?"
Mazibuko: The problem with corruption in SA is "there is no accountability, no consequences." Will the ANC "fire Jacob Zuma if he is found guilty?"
Member of the audience: "When are we going to recall Jacob Zuma?"
With these electrifying exchanges within the active intelligence of the nation, a new voice speaks in discussion with itself concerning the future of the nation, a discussion in which the National Assembly has shown itself to be just a talking shop, at the public's expense.
That, perhaps - the divorce between Parliament and the People - is the most dangerous threat to the legacy of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, before he goes to rest at Qunu.
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
