LINDELANI SHEZI: A COOL-HEADED RESPONSE!
Under normal circumstances, we would not have utilised the limited time and space available to us to respond to what, in the absence of empirical evidence suggesting otherwise, appeared to be anger, retaliation and ‘I-want-to-ridicule-him-mentality' based diatribe written by Lindelani Shezi. Initially, one of the main reasons of not wanting to respond to his letter is that the character called Shezi ironically exposed his own political limitations by publicly raising internal issues of the organisation.
Hence some amongst us could not help but wonder if he still remembers that our participation in the battle of ideas excludes internal matters of the organisations. Question is: who are you addressing when you narrate internal matters in the media? By the way, Mr. Shezi's article was entitled "Post-leadership era hangover by Mthandeni Dlungwane, demonstrated in his open letter to the loud-mouthed Julius" and it was published on the 4th of October 2012 by Politicsweb.
It is our well considered belief that opportunism and (sub) consciously vulgarised thinking must be dealt with whenever it glares its ugly head without stooping into Shezi's level in terms of confusing insults, sarcasm, opportunism, self-contradiction, anger, vindictiveness and jealousy with political clarity, robust but comradely engagement and constructive criticism. Perhaps, before responding to most of Shezi's attack that is mis-presented as a response, let some of us admit that he is very good in written English but his text lacks what, in the academia, is called coherence.
The above point is based this on the fact that, closely and carefully analysed, his article is full of contradictions and superfluous repetition which is normally found in writings that are informed by nothing other than anger and unfulfilable desire to get back at Cde Mtha for reasons that are only subject to speculations such as pure jealousy. At this infantry stage of our response to Shezi's diatribe, it should also be indicated that the basis for this article is to debunk most of Shezi's alleged response to Cde Mtha.
The honourable citizen in the form of Mr. Shezi falsely argues that Cde. Mtha is "desperate to portray himself as a Messiah, who was just an innocent bystander ... (in) creation of the current crisis and instability in the ANCYL"; that Cde. Mtha was mysteriously elected "because of electoral fraud and rigging of the (ANC YL) Howard College Provincial Congress (not Conference since, conceptually, the latter is only held by the mother body).
Typical of a disgruntled person who, for instance, falsely believes that his space to personal success and access to business opportunities was closed by someone else, Mr. Shezi continues to wildly claim that Cde. Mtha is part of the "24th ANCYL Congress class project" (whatever this confusing concept - which has been stolen out of context from the SACP - means). He further claims that Cde. Mtha has an ally that was recruited from the IFP and that he (Cde. Mtha) and his ally have "stopped insulting President Zuma and other ANC leaders... (and this) is a sign of growth and knowledge of the ANC tradition on his side..."
As if he knows something that most of us are not familiar with although he ironically fails to mention it, he disputes without providing convincing facts (except for the remarks allegedly uttered at ANC YL regional congresses even though Mr. Shezi did not telling us how he managed to attend all of them and if that would not amount to deliberately sowing divisions and anarchy, if he did actually attend) that the Provincial Executive of the ANC YL in KwaZulu Natal was disbanded mainly because they vehemently refused to be co-opted into Julius Malema's other agenda (i.e. the removal of President Zuma).
We have deliberately ignored some of the claims that you have made in your letter because they are similar to ‘Spaza shop' and/or luxurious clubs' mongerised gossips. At the risk of being accused of pompousness, let us begin by saying that elementary Academic Literacy teaches us that a title of any written work must talk to the content and vice versa. However, and this is our first point towards debunking Mr. Shezi's harangue, there is a serious disjuncture between the text and the title in that the latter says something significantly different from the content of the so-called response which has a glaring bitter tone.
Secondly, members of any revolutionary formation/s in general and particularly those who fallaciously or legitimately claim to be more matured than others should know that discussing internal matters of the organisation is an unforgiveable organisational offense and ill-discipline of the worst form whose ultimate result is damage to our glorious movement. On the forgoing point, Chairman Mao writing in the pamphlet called "Correcting Mistaken Ideas within the Party" had this to say:
"Inner-Party criticism is a weapon for strengthening the Party organisation (read as: Mass Democratic Movement as led by the African National Congress) and increasing its fighting capacity. In the Party organisation...however criticism is not always of this character, and sometimes turns into personal attack. As a result, it damages the Party organisation as well as individuals. This is a manifestation of petty-bourgeois individualism. Method of correction is to help Party members (like Mr. Shezi) to understand that the purpose of criticism is to increase the Party's fighting capacity in order to achieve victory...and that it should not be used as a means of personal attack".
The first People's President continued in the same pamphlet to correctly contend that:
"Many Party members make their criticisms not inside, but outside, the Party. The reason is that ... (they have) not yet grasped the importance of the Party organisation (its meetings and so forth), and sees no difference between criticism inside and outside the organization. The method of correction is to educate Party members so that they understand the importance of Party organization and make their criticisms of Party committees or comrades at Party meetings".
We would not seek to contextualise Chairman Mao's text because it, figuratively, fits like a plug in the socket in terms of educating Mr. Shezi that true (and not Gucci or fly-by-night) revolutionaries do not raise internal issues in the media irrespective of how agrieved or jealousy he is about the political tasks the party structures have given to certain comrades (read as Cde. Mtha). But at a normal apolitical level, we ‘understand' that sometimes it can be stressing to see someone graduating to higher levels when you have undermined him because of falsely thinking that you are better off than him.
Thirdly, it is false to allege that Cde. Mtha did not acknowledge his contribution in the re-election of Julius Malema. Consistent with Umrabulo 11 (i.e. through the eye of the needle) which says that one of the important qualities of leaders is to recognize their mistakes and be able to learn from it, Cde. Mtha admited that he played a central role as part of the collective in ensuring that Julius Malema is re-elected but he did not know that Julius had a double agenda.
After all, it was the Provincial Executive Committee of the ANCYL under Cde. Mtha that distanced itself from a so-called "Economic Freedom" march whose true intention was to attempt to bully the ANC into dropping disciplinary steps against Julius and company. Why our PEC would correctly discourage us from attending the march if they agreed with Julius? What could have been the reason for the fall out with the ANC YL KZN PEC except that Julius attempted to force them (ANC YL KZN PEC) to support his misguided militancy?
Since you appear to care less about, figuratively, washing our ANC's dirty linen in public, why don't you tell us of date and exact reasons of the alleged fallout? What choice of words should he use that would make sense to you, Mr. Shezi? But understandable, English is presumable your second language just like most of us.Fourthly, you claim that Cde. Mtha is presenting himself as a Messiah but you do not tell us that he is a Messiah of what.
You just reminded us of our first year days at University when we excited about certain terms hence we would throw them anyhow even if it's out of context (by the way, excitement about uncontextualised concepts is an integral part of an infantry learning stage). Moreover, the least said about Cde. Mtha's ally who is an IFP the better (unless you have creative means of accessing IFP membership database) but it suffices to mention that it's un-revolutionary and un-ANC to remind others about their backgrounds since revolutionary movements have a duty to engage in continues recruitment.
Put differently, in Marxist terms a bourgeoisie who commits class suicide can legitimately become part of a revolutionary working class just like a former Azanian can become a sturdy Youth Leaguer. By the way, you did not tell us about your own political, social and otherwise background. In Philosophy 203, arguments that rely on someone‘s background or personalities are viewed as illogical. Perhaps, we must remind you that it is Lower South Coast, under the late Cde Wandile Mkhize, that firstly defied the ANC YL KZN position in 2008 ANC YL Congress by supporting Julius but we never called them names.
The main reason why we do not label comrades who change their leadership perspective is because some of us understand that dialectical thinking teaches us that everything that is under the sun is subject to change except change itself.
This change depends on material conditions at a given epoch, time and space. In the same vein, when we supported (including President Zuma who even wrote a newspaper article towards the 2002 ANC National Conference to declare support for Cde. Mbeki) Cde Thabo Mbeki in 1997 and 2002 Conferences of the ANC nobody called anyone names such as opportunists.
The reason for this is that our support for a particular leadership perspective is normally based on a particular mandate. And when that given mandate is undermined, such leadership should accordingly be removed or reconfigured. The last point that is that yes, economic freedom is a foreign concept in Marxist terms. However, Marx himself hated those who vulgarised his ideas such as misunderstanding them to be like a fixed statue. In fact, Marx himself did speak about economic emancipation (read as freedom) but such trajectory, and we agree with him, must not be based on the notion of free market or capitalist economics. Rather, Marx and his friend Engels spoke of economic emancipation of the working people through the transfer of ownership from the bourgeois to the proletariat (and/or socialisation) of the means of production and the abolishment of private property.
Therefore, Mr. Shezi must not confuse the degeneration of the ANC YL with the progressiveness (limited as it could be) of the idea that they have resuscitated albeit they do not have a "copyright" as Lazola Damase once correctly said. After all, historical materialism teaches us that even the working class have benefited from some of the bourgeois ideas that were developed by big capitalist industries. For instance, technology which we are now using to exchange ideas or engage in a festival of ideas as we are doing is a product of bourgeois economics.
It is in the light of this fact that Mr. Shezi committed a theoretical mistake of reading text but forgetting to understand the context which in Marxist terms is arguable referred to as: giving concrete analysis of the concrete situation (which could include text). By the way, Cde. Mtha is a Provincial Executive Committee member of the ANC in KwaZulu Natal and Moses Mabhida Region's Deputy Chair of the ANC and if you are really discipline at least politically, how dare do you speak like that to him and worst of it all in the media?
Only your political conscience, if any exist, could respond to this but our tentative findings about your modus operandi has confirmed that you are a very energetic individual who likes controversy and that you believe that nobody else would ever make sense except if you endorse their views. However we hope that such findings could be corrected hence we want to believe that sanity would prevail in that you will pick up a phone call and sort out whatever personal grievances that you have against Cde. Mtha. However if you do not respect him but at least respect the offices that he holds: is this too much to ask?
Respecting him would not only protect the integrity of the ANC which Cde. Mtha symbolises by virtue of the positions that he holds and rest assured, Cde Mtha is very matured and humbled. After all, Cde Mao correctly said that subjectivism as displayed by Shezi causes great harm to the analysis of the political situation. It is this subjectivism that, perhaps, clouded Mr. Shezi such that he wrote a sub-heading in a form of question asking as to what's to be done. However he dismally failed to link his text to the sub-heading typical of a man whose writing is somehow informed by self-defeatist tendencies such as bitterness, anger, jealousy and holier than though mentality.
Finally, Chairman Mao correctly contended that subjective analysis of any political situation "inevitable results either in opportunism or putschism" hence unprincipled disputes are bred. Thus organisational democracy (mandates and periodised leadership elections), principles (democratic centralism and constructive criticism) and values (such as respect for elected leaders) are undermined.
Thembinkosi "Guerrilla" Zondi is ANC Moses Mabhida's KZ221 Ward 3 Branch Secretary and ANC KZN Caucus Senior Researcher writing in his personal capacity.
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
