The Defence for President Zuma and his collective is the defence for the ANC!
Under normally circumstances, I would not have written this article to talk about internal processes of our ANC, our hope, our vision and our future. However, I have unenthusiastically decided to write this article for fear of allowing anarchy conducted in our name/s to go into history books unchallenged.
Basic politics and history teaches us that the easiest way to destabilize any liberation movement and everything that it stands for is through undermining its elected leadership and its official decisions. Whether one theoretically and/or personally agrees with them or not is a neither here nor there but the fact of the matter is that disciplined members of the ANC must defend and implement such decisions.
The recent instances of loose cannons masquerading as economic freedom fighters and protesting against ANC decisions in our name/s must be challenged by all genuine economic freedom fighters. By the way, to be an economic freedom fighter is a relevant generational clarion call that is being abused for reasons that could only be a figment of our respective imaginations.
Hence this short article seeks to argue that while we stand by all elected leaders and support the second phase of the national democratic revolution (i.e. the translation of political power into economic freedom struggle in our lifetime) and generational mix. However, our support shouldn't be misinterpreted as a rubber stamp of anarchy and perceived or real attack on President Zuma and the ANC property including its decisions.
In defending my argument, I will briefly highlight the challenges pre and post ANC 2007 Conference; interventions made by the current ANC leadership to deal with those challenges and finally my view on why we should choose the ANC than blind loyalty to individuals who take our genuine support for them for granted.
It is a known fact that before the ANC 2007 Conference, different sub-cultures such as howling at elected leadership, staging walkouts, public spats, burning of t-shirts of a sitting President, state organs used to settle political scores, use of the ANC to rubber stamp Cabinet decisions, personality cult and turning genuine worker's salary-related strikes into political strikes to weaken elected leadership were used to remove President Mbeki and his collective.
Once the Polokwane 2007 train had passed the station, the newly elected leadership amongst other things had to close ranks in order to heal the ANC from the bruises of the build up to the Conference. This was a more urgent task because the ANC 2007 Strategy and Tactics states that the ANC must keep those within it happy so as to attract new members and that the founding principle of the ANC is unity.
However forging unity was made difficult by some senior members who could not swallow their bruised political egos and accept that Comrade Zuma is now in charge. For instance, we saw the government running parallel programs aimed at undermining the ANC. But the worst of it all, we saw a new tendency where certain government leaders acted as if they are bigger than the ANC. Another example was the Cabinet's intention to challenge the Pietermaritzburg High Court outcomes on the issue of interference by some comrades in relation to President Jacob Zuma's persecution and NOT PROSECUTION. Hence the ANC NEC correctly took a decision to recall Cde TM.
Immediately after TM's recall, we saw another new tendency where ministers resigned en masse just because of personality cult or blind loyalty to an individual than the ANC. However President Zuma and his collective's strong leadership skills brought stability both within the ANC in general and the county in particular.
Similarly, the ANC leadership crisscrossed the whole country forging unity and cohesion to heal ourselves from Polokwane sub-cultures so as to ensure that never and never again shall anarchy be used to resolve any internal political differences. At a programmatic level, we saw the ANC government managing transition until 2009 in a very stable fashion.
We also saw decisive action in terms of implementing some of the Polokwane resolutions such as the establishment of a state owned mining company, reconfiguration of Umsobomvu and the National Youth Commission into NYDA, progressive implementation of free education, strengthening of our selection criteria for electing ward councillors and the translation of ANC priorities into government's program of action.
In fact, the ANC January 8 Statement of 2010 even went to the extent of adopting a phrase popularized by the ANC Youth League of Economic Freedom in our lifetime because political power without economic freedom is meaningless. Now as to why would some people choose to burn ANC t-shirts and flags just because our beloved ANCYL top 5 has been charged defeats both political logic and common sense.
Yes, lectures were absconded just to spend sleepless nights and days outside the Pietermaritzburg High Court but Luthuli House is not an arm of government but our revolutionary house. Therefore any attack on Luthuli House is an attack on the ANC and everything that it stands for.
Yes, we walked out in Wadley Stadium while President TM was on the podium. Yes, we insulted any leader who was thought to be against our view to elect President Zuma but that was wrong and out of order. Yes, we 100% support Julius Malema and his collective as YL leaders (not as individuals) but we do not support anarchy and the perceived or real plan to prematurely remove JZ because he remains relevant now and beyond 2012.
As we said before: we choose the ANC than individuals because the latter comes and go but the former remains. Therefore the defense for the ANC leadership amounts to the defense for our ANC, our vision, our hope and our future.
Thembinkosi "Guerrilla" Zondi, Moses Mabhida's KZ221 ward 3 ANC branch Secretary writing in his own personal capacity.
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