Dear Archbishop Thabo Makgoba

You have elected to abuse the comfort of your holy cloth to hail our President and found him guilty before the alter.

My moral compass has commanded me to respond to the article you wrote in the Sunday Independent newspaper about the findings of the final report of the Public Protector on the security upgrades of the official residence of our President at Nkandla. The end and the beginning of it confirms that lies often told become the truth.

I quote you verbatim your insinuations in the following words of your article

' It is deeply regrettable that in the mist of the corruption engulfing our society, certain clergy have ganged up against the Public Protector in the name of the church.

They have done so without adequate knowledge of her reports and their intervention only serves to undermine the fight against corruption.

It is clear to any observer that their intervention was timed to coincide with the highly critical report into the conduct of President Jacob  Zuma and comes across as an unfortunate attempt to tarnish the name of the Protector, in view of what is now out there as a report underlying serious misgivings about governance and ethics in our body politic'.

I found it equally regrettable that you have elected to use the comfort of your holy cloth to hail the President of the ANC and our country, and found him guilty before the alter. I find solace from the perspective that subjective reasoning is part of the subconscious mind of each and every moral being.

It will also not be far fetched that your deep connotations are intended to gang against our President in the name of the church. This is by far obtained by your subjective leadership preferences within the ANC that has surpassed your objective considerations.

I must however remind you that the walls of the moral compound always stand by its consciousness of the teachings of our Almighty that thou shall not judge. That He is the one who knows our sins before we can say them.

I am afraid that the subconscious mind of the son of man, the Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, has for subjective reasoning, abused the comfort of the holy cloth, to find the President of the ANC and the Republic, guilty before the alter.

I sincerely hope and believe that you wrote the article fully aware of the true meaning of its contents and consequential perceptions on the person of our President. Your bold insinuations that the conduct of our President is that of a corrupt person who does not want to be accountable to his own people, leaves much to be desired.

But remember that one of the greatest philosophers of our time, Karl Marx, has to espouse the following words which have become more relevant than ever before under the circumstances' 

The task of history, therefore, once the world beyond the truth has disappeared, is to establish the truth of this world. 

The immediate task of philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked, is to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms. 

Thus the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of the earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics'.

You have unreservedly blamed other clergies for becoming critical of the conduct of our Public Protector whilst at the same you are rampaging the name of our President. Maybe the message you want to convey is that not all animals are equal.

You have elected to employ your selective understanding on the findings of the report to suggest that our President is corrupt and therefore guilty before the eyes of the people. You have also done so even if the report is consistent with the recommendations of the inter ministerial task team and therefore exonerating our President.

It is unfortunate for high ranking church leaders of your calibre to perpetuate wrong perceptions that the office of the Public Protector is a law unto itself. It must be clear that the office of the Public Protector is accountable to the parliament of our country and not to the fancy glamorous media gallery.

You will equally agree with me that it will never be in the best interest of our rainbow nation to allow individuals to abuse the powers bestowed upon them to preside over the jurisdictions of our chapter nine institutions. The truth is that the conduct and the posture of the Public Protector in the recent past has raised the eyebrows of many of our people.

You will concur with me that one of the most fundamental tasks of the church is to foster the unity and cohesion of our society. Therefore i hope you will embrace my extrapolation that manipulating the authority of the church to fight factional political battles is the most blatant sin.

Our government has over the past twenty years proven itself to be committed to eradication of the pandemic acts of corruption inherited from the Apartheid historical past. We are committed to root out all forms of social ills threatening the moral fabric of our society.

The ANC led government is in the right cause to realise the objectives of our national democratic revolution. We are determined to resolve the contradictions of poverty, disease and underdevelopment that have over the years of Apartheid colonial oppression and exploitation become the principal characteristic of our society.

The only truth is that there is no any other government in the history of our country that has become so accountable and transparent to its own people like the ANC led government. Twenty years of our democratic dispensation is indeed a short good journey with a good story to tell 

We make a clarion call to all the people of our country to vote for the ANC in the forthcoming national general elections. The unity and cohesion of our revolution is paramount to the future of our people.

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

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