PART TWO

"If you do not resist the inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable is." Terry Eagleton.

[Quoted by former ANC Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe in his Address at Liliesleaf Trust's Commemorative Gala in Honour of the Harold Wolpe Trust, 21 June 2012.]

Few things in life ever outraged Kgalema Motlanthe as much as the brazen and illegal USA invasion of Iraq in 2003. His emotions just boiled over and bubbled into the open. He displayed raw political anger at this unilateral war of choice on the part of the USA Republican Party administration of President George W Bush.

I attended an evening public meeting in Lenasia, south of Johannesburg, called to protest against the USA war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The keynote speaker at the event was Motlanthe himself, then the fiery ANC Secretary General. In his powerful and livid address to the meeting, Motlanthe told a memorable harrowing tale, from his youth, about how a lone thug, wielding only a knife or a broken bottle, would hold hostage and single-handedly terrorize an entire Soweto train coach full of hundreds of adult commuters going either to or from work in the Johannesburg CBD. According to Motlanthe, none of these Soweto commuters would dare to challenge or fight back the knife-wielding thug, although he was in a minority of one. He enquired from the pro-Iraq Lenasia protest meeting as to how could it be that a lone, often young thug, just wielding a knife or a broken bottle, could so utterly terrorize hundreds of commuters and get away with it.

He likened the brazen and criminal behaviour of the Soweto train thug to former USA President George W Bush's invasion of Iraq. And he likened the impotence of the Soweto commuters confronted by a lone thug to the inability of the world community to confront the USA administration on its illegal and unilateral invasion of Iraq, under false pretenses. He concluded his illustrative and sombre tale by saying: "Thugs must always be confronted, whatever the consequences to ourselves, whether they are local thugs or thugs on the global stage."

Later on, on a different occasion, Motlanthe went as far as saying he believed that SA was on the target list of countries endowed with natural resources, which the USA planned to invade in the future, following its neo-con 'regime change' modus operandus in Iraq. His daring statement shook the USA State Department's Africa policy establishment to its very foundation, with self-justifying and strident denials issuing from it.

But the point is that here was Motlanthe pronouncing clearly, logically and loudly his controversial views and convictions, unafraid to challenge the ultimate global 'thug', or lone global super-power, after his bitter experience of observing grown-up Soweto commuters reduced to shivers and failing to confront a local petty knife-wielding thug on a Soweto train.

The second highly public instance of Motlanthe vigorously speaking unblemished truth to power, was his very sharp and strong public rebuke and criticism of how the Scorpions, during the administration of former President Thabo Mbeki, were conducting themselves cavalierly regarding the corruption charges which were brought against the then ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma, calling their methods 'Hollywood style.'

And of course the recent example of Motlanthe speaking his mind without any fear was last year, when he publicly distanced himself from how the ANC Disciplinary Committee (ANCDC) and ANC National Disciplinary Committee of Appeal (ANC NDCA) ham-handedly dealt with the matter of the expulsion of the former ANCYL leader, Julius Malema, from the ANC, as well as the suspension of the former ANCYL Secretary General Sindiso Magaqa and former ANCYL spokesman Floyd Shivambu.

This was despite the fact that Motlanthe must have known that by the time he came to the belated defence of Malema, a very strong anti-Julius Malema sentiment had become a touchstone in powerful circles within the ANC leadership and influential pro-Zuma ANC branches, who, if anything, considered Julius Malema himself a dangerous and incorrigible "thug", who needed to be confronted and politically defeated once and for all. 

In taking this high-risk public stance on Malema's expulsion from the ANC, Motlanthe thus forfeited any residual sympathy for himself from these vindictive circles on the road to Mangaung. But he did take the public stance as a matter of principle, whatever the electoral cost to himself.

So, that Motlanthe is a man and politician of enormous courage and deep convictions, and quiet, steely determination, there can be absolutely no doubt. In fact, nothing better attests to this truth than his decision to speak out against the very popular and highly entrenched practice of 'ANC slates', and to finally enter into a hopelessly doomed and one-sided contest against the incumbent Jacob Zuma, for the top ANC position, just to make an important statement on a political principle he holds dear. This he did despite losing a position that almost guaranteed him automatic ascension to the position he was contesting for in five years' time.

What, therefore, accounts for the pervasive national perception that he is indecisive and inscrutable? That he does not speak out his mind? That he is uncomfortably reticent? How come that even after his most important and influential Liliesleaf Address, his most important speech during his leadership in the ANC, at the Harold Wolpe Trust last year, where he brilliantly set out his views, core political values on which he anchors his whole political persona, and his vision on a wide range of national and international issues, there was and still is a nagging public feeling, if not disquiet, that he is playing his cards too close to his chest for a major public leader operating under conditions of transparency, accountability, legality and constitutional democracy? That he is not really letting in ANC branch delegates and the general SA public about what he frankly thinks and believes about the challenges facing the ANC and the country at the current political juncture? That he is too cautious and calculating for comfort?

Against this background, was Epainette Mbeki correct and fair last year regarding her very public and critical pronouncements on Kgalema Motlanthe's style of leadership?

In the opening paragraph of his eulogy delivered for former USA President Gerald R. Ford, the former USA Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, said the following:

"According to an ancient tradition, God preserves humanity despite its many transgressions because at any one period there exist 10 just individuals who, without being aware of their role, redeem mankind."

There is no doubt that if, in the case of the ANC and SA, there are '10 just individuals', who have 'redeemed' us before God in the last fifteen years, the name of Kgalema Motlanthe would feature prominently up there amongst them.

As Sandile Memela, the chief director for social cohesion at the SA department of arts and culture, correctly stated in a recent article, Motlanthe is a major leader produced by the ANC in the last half a century of its glorious and selfless struggle for freedom and post-apartheid development and reconstruction. He is a sublime example of the undying capacity of the ANC, even under the democratic dispensation, to produce phenomenal leaders of great national and global stature and impact. They are leaders that, in the words of Henry Kissinger, continue to make 'God to preserve' the ANC and SA. They are a true gift to our diverse SA society and polity. Because they are the glue that holds us together, even under stress, and they give meaning to the lofty dreams of our great Constitution. They are our priceless unifiers, and not our pathetic and despicable dividers.

This is a fact the ANC itself long recognised. In the early 2000s, a great long piece honouring Motlanthe's long and illustrious struggle against apartheid, and his service to the SA liberation movement and trade unionism, was penned anonymously in the ANC Today online. It was generally believed that this great tribute to Motlanthe was in fact penned by former ANC President Thabo Mbeki.

Yet Motlanthe's rise to the top did not always garner the deserved media headlines outside the ANC and its alliance partners of COSATU and SACP.

No wonder political observers and the general public did not pay sufficient attention to the self-styled and quiet transformation of Motlanthe from being the ANC's Organisational Man, into being the ANC's pre-eminent Organic Intellectual and Statesman in the post-Mbeki era.

Motlanthe the Organisational Man is best captured by the photo of the Polokwane victors after the announcement of the election results. In this photo, Motlanthe's very attire, which he must have selected self-consciously to convey a particular message and signal to those who had just elected him as ANC Secretary General, is telling - a cap, a bomber waistcoat, khaki shirt, etc. He was a man ready to get his hands dirty, a man who threw away his suit, and was ready to muddy his boots and be out there in the scorching sun or drenching rain, protected only by his cap, in the thick and thin among ANC branch members. He was clearly ready to go forth to fix the ANC and SA problems, as part of the newly-elected Polokwane leadership collective led by Jacob Zuma. And he kept in close proximity with ANC branches all the time, everywhere.

Yet by the time Motlanthe ascended the Mangaung stage in December last year, this time as the elective conference's biggest and most famous loser, it was clear to all that the Organic Intellectual and the Statesman in Motlanthe had completely vanquished Motlanthe the ANC Organisational Man of Polokwane. Again in Mangaung his self-conscious choice of attire spoke volumes. Out went the cap, the khakhi apparrel, the bomber waistcoat, the confidence to face the party challenges and ANC branch delegates. Out too had gone the ANC Organisational Man.

In came the brilliant, immaculate and very expensive-looking executive Afro-shirts, their thoughtful whiteness or blackness, backgrounding ANC colours, conveying the unmistakable sense of professional and intellectual detachment as well as a sublime diplomatic deportment. His face was pensive, as if looking way beyond Mangaung. The gap that had developed between him and the ANC branch delegates since Polokwane could have swallowed whole the multi-story building housing Luthuli House, the ANC's HQ.

Amidst the cacophony, singing, shouting and ululating, coupled with obscene gestures, (especially the touching of the imaginary goatee to mock him), Motlanthe seemed not so much lonely and abandoned, but cool, calm and collected, just as he normally would be at his deputy presidential office at the Union Buildings, our seat of national executive power. He oozed and epitomized cool executive post-apartheid power, in the midst of the maddening Mangaung conference clutter.

It was like he was not sucking up the raw and electric emotions around him, as if he had finally become the bad conductor and carrier of the political electricity emitted by close to five thousands ANC branch delegates around him. Complete aloneness amongst the screaming ANC Mangaung multitudes. In that rare, precious moment, Motlanthe was the perfect picture of self- control - controlling his every emotion, his body language, his restraint gestures, and, seemingly, even the automatic twitches of his facial muscles. He did not break a single drop of sweat. He was the ANC and SA's ultimate Mr Inscrutability.

As Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese strategist put it:

"Knowing others is intelligence;
Knowing yourself is true wisdom
Mastering others is strength.
Mastering yourself is true power."

At the ANC Mangaung conference last year, Motlanthe the loser got to know himself pretty well. And he mastered himself exceptionally well. True power, true wisdom. The makings of his ultimate political triumph in the long run.

It was as if Motlanthe was retorting to Nietzsche, the German philosopher:

"No, I am not the slave of followers, of fame. Never"

Normally we would feel deep pity for a loser who had just been so spectacularly vanquished. But in Mangaung, Motlanthe achieved a very rare political feat, maybe the first in our politics - we watched him because we still wanted him to teach us a deep, profound, all-encompassing lesson about post-Mandela ANC politics, to tell us truth for the ages, even as he had just suffered his first and only major political defeat in public.

Even before he picked himself up, dusted himself off, pulled himself together and collected his bearings about him, even as he was still semi-dazed and punch-drunk, even in the insufferable and utterly wretched state he was in, following his crushing defeat, when he was under the intense glare of local and international media spotlight, we still trusted in his better political judgment, that he would make the right move, say the right words and make the right gesture. And he did not disappoint us, or let us down. Because we had given up on ever learning any useful and profound lesson from the Mangaung victor himself, and did not expect any such lesson from him, even in his rare, glorious moment of supreme, crashing political victory over Motlanthe.

It was like it was Kgalema Motlanthe who owned the moment.

We wanted Motlanthe, in his astonishing and emphatic defeat in Mangaung, to still be able to comfort us by his considered, graceful, and humane reaction and self-composure to his defeat, not feeling much collective obligation to comfort him, in turn, in his most miserable political hour. We hoped the best in him did not shatter into small pieces together with his crushed Mangaung presidential ambition. We hoped he would use his humiliating defeat to again remind all of us of the best in us.

And he did.

His flashing of the V-sign to us, from his Mangaung conference loser's seat, so soon after his crushing electoral defeat, captured by the Daily Maverick, was the Mangaung 'WOW' moment, when we released, as if on cue, an unprecedented, collective sigh of relief across South Africa.

Because Motlanthe has truly emerged as SA's major, influential, transformational, ethical and visionary ANC and SA leader of our time, who really no more requires ANC or SA Government position or platform to exercise his magnetic charm and transformational influence over us. He is an individual, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger, unaware of his role of being one of the 10 such individuals 'redeeming us before God'.

All this was confirmed by the very bizarre wild and rapturous applause from the very Mangaung ANC branch delegates, who had just remorselessly voted Motlanthe out of ANC power, greeting him when he took to the podium to deliver his ANC-styled and very graceful concession speech. The applause for the brief concession speech by the defeated candidate (Motlanthe) was as loud and boisterous as the applause when the Mangaung victor (Zuma) was announced.

I think Motlanthe has been very successful in projecting himself, post-Polokwane, as an all-South African thought-leader, organic intellectual, ethical force, and deep thinker, during our age of great national turbulence, frailties and uncertainties. He projects a very thoughtful, deliberate, considerate and re-assuring leadership gravitas. There is huge dignity, abiding integrity and embedded incorruptibility about him regarding his official and personal conduct. Polls after polls throughout last year revealed that he remains the first leadership choice for the majority of South Africans canvassed, across all our nation's multiple divides and faultlines, especially and crucially among SA youth, who are hankering after an authentic post-Mandela political hero.

He is untarnished by scandal, unaffected by vile BEE corruption or the venality of close relatives, uncorrupted by power, immune from abuse of power, and not bedazzled by the acquisitive or quick-accumulation razzmatazz impulses that have become a second nature to so many ANC and Government leaders of today. He is our ultimate servant leader, impeccable ethical being, and a towering ANC organic intellectual of his generation.

Motlanthe embodies the saying by Ross Douthat, the Washington Post columnist, that "sometimes power educates, rather than corrupts."

But of course Motlanthe is not perfect, least so an angel. A mere glance at the screaming headline "Nothing for mahala", of the SA Sunday Times of 11 March 2012, under which was the photo of Motlanthe and his very beautiful partner, Gugu Mtshali, appeared. The accompanying sub-title was "Motlanthe's partner implicated in bid to 'buy' government support for R2-billion sanction-busting deal to sell helicopters to Iran." By the time the SA Public Protector's investigation report on the matter cleared Motlanthe and his partner, the immense propaganda damage had been done to both.

[Given that Motlanthe admires Moses Kotane so much as his revolutionary hero and role-model, it is interesting to recall a popular apocryphal tale, so beloved and popular within the exiled ANC ranks, that upon lying his eyes for the first time on the similarly very beautiful young Winnie Mandela, Moses Kotane pulled Nelson Mandela aside and warned him of the real danger of a revolutionary like Mandela committing his heart to such mesmerizing feminine beauty. So one wonders what Moses Kotane would say to Motlanthe, his self-anointed protégé, as an aside, were he to rise from the dead and lay his eyes on the equally mesmerizingly beautiful Gugu Mtshali, Motlanthe's partner. What would Kotane's advice be to Motlanthe regarding Gugu Mtshali's business involvement with the controversial Imperial Crown Trading and its recent legal punch-up with Kumba Iron Ore? And would Kotane's postlife warning to Motlanthe prove similarly prophetic, as it became so, sadly, for Mandela.]

Perhaps Motlanthe's greatest failing in the run-up to Mangaung was to make light of the consistent predictions in the SA media that he faced political routing and humiliation at the hands of Jacob Zuma in Mangaung. One of such warning was issued by Justice Malala, in his 'Monday morning matters', a The Times (SA) column, entitled 'Leave the chief alone', on 05 November 2012. Malala wrote:

"It is worth reflecting on the quality of those who will be in Mangaung in December. Are they people who understand the complex demands of leadership in the tough times the world is going through? Are they in Mangaung to ensure that a leader who will turn a blind eye to their corruption succeeds?"

Towards the end of last year, the controversial SA political commentator, Prince Mashele, had managed, by dint of his weekly Sowetan op-ed columns in the run-up to Mangaung, to propel himself into the very elite and erudite group of Motlanthe's public intellectual critics.

In his Sowetan article of 12 November 2012, entitled 'Mangaung done and dusted', Mashele made the important political point that already that early on, several weeks before Mangaung, Jacob Zuma had outwitted his ANC party rivals to get himself re-elected. And this is what Mashele wrote about Motlanthe:

"Motlanthe is very naïve. He believes in the old, fairy-tale ANC of wise men and disciplined cadres of the movement. His imaginary ANC is one populated by educated members who spend long hours interrogating the intersection between the national question and the class struggle." 

Mashele further wrote that "the politically educated cadres of Motlanthe are imagined to possess some unique mental attributes that make them rise above the dictates of the stomach."

According to the diagnosis of Mashele "the problem with Motlanthe's imagined cadres is that they live in the mental world, far above the real world of dirty politics. In the real world, members don't care about some nebulous concepts and high phraseologies such as the 'national democratic revolution.' In the real world the key question is: which government department can we use to build a King Solomon-like palace like Nkandla?"

As he went full throttle in his bitter and critical assessment of the leadership and political performance of Motlanthe, Prince Mashele might have been unaware of how China's legendary revolutionary and founder, Mao Tse Tung, provided an assessment of Josef Stalin, the Soviet dictator, and admittedly a ruler and leader so thoroughly nasty and brutal that he makes Motlanthe to look like Mother Theresa with a white goatee. Nevertheless Mao Tse Tung, in his 1956 'Ten Major Relationships', wrote the following about Stalin:

"It is the opinion of the Central Committee that Stalin's mistakes amounted to only 30 per cent of the whole and his achievements to 70 per cent, and that all things considered, Stalin was a great Marxist."

Were he to use the same Maoist methodology of assessing Motlanthe's weaknesses and achievements, I suspect that Prince Mashele would be a lot more generous and be able to agree that, with regard to Motlanthe's leadership and performance since Polokwane, "all things considered, his achievements are primary, and mistakes secondary." (Mao Tse Tung, in 'Be Activists in Promoting the Revolution.')

But despite Motlanthe's overall sterling achievements, there should never be any underestimation of the dazzling magnitude of Jacob Zuma's crushing victory over his former ANC deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe. So total and resounding was Zuma's victory that even if Zuma had enjoyed only the active voting of his supporters in KZN and the tiny branch delegation of the Northern Cape, Zuma would still have trounced Motlanthe's total national branch delegate support handsomely.

Put it differently, and in light of sorry tribalism accusations there were sometimes unfortunately hurled at Zuma by some of the ABZ forces, it is really impressive to note that, even if the Nguni hinterland of KZN, Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape had not actively voted for Zuma in Mangaung, Zuma would have still been able to convincingly pulverize Motlanthe and win re-election.

Even much more impressive is that even if only the nominally pro-Motlanthe provinces of Gauteng, Limpopo and the Western Cape, plus the ANC NEC and the ANC leagues, had voted in Mangaung, Zuma might still have been able to pull a surprising draw or win over Motlanthe in Mangaung. So whichever way the cards deck was stacked in Mangaung, Motlanthe was an undisputed loser.

One of the placards raised by pro-Zuma supporters after Zuma's shattering victory simply read "The Zuma Moment", thus best capturing the political zeitgeist of Mangaung in December 2012.

The Sowetan Online of 18 December 2012 reported on a deliriously ecstatic pro-Zuma supporter hooting his vehicle in Johannesburg after the Zuma victory in Mangaung and loudly shouting "Iwile i'Mbuzi!" (Zulu for 'the goat has perished', in a mocking reference to the now fabled white goatee of Kgalema Motlanthe).

At this, his loneliest political moment, did Kgalema Motanthe recall to himself Eagleton's quote, which he peppered his memorable Liliesleaf Address of last year with, that:

"If you do not resist the inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable is?"

Does Motlanthe still fancy that resisting the inevitable, to know how inevitable the inevitable is, is still worth his sweat, his long-nurtured political reputation, and his elevated ANC status? Did he really not see that Zuma's victory in Mangaung was inevitable? Or did he just want to resist the inevitable, to check how inevitable that inevitable was?

These are some of the inevitable post-Mangaung political questions Kgalema Motlanthe should not try to resist!

All of South Africa understood that Mangaung was indeed a major, historic victory by ANC President Jacob Zuma.

For me the early herald of the impending massive victory by Jacob Zuma in Mangaung came in the morning of 18 December last year, several hours before the ANC IEC announced the voting results for the ANC Top Six. I turned on the TV to watch Vuyo Mbuli's SABC blanket coverage of the historic ANC event. Moments before he interviewed Sipho Seepe, the pro-Zuma political commentator, Vuyo chatted to an young black African SME book trader, who was selling struggle and ANC literature from his stall close to the conference tent.

The young trader admitted that he was very happy with his roaring business of selling books such as "ANC - A View from Moscow", "Eight Days in September", one book by Ray Alexander, etc. But then he made a truly startling commercial confession - the ANC branch delegates were just not interested to buy Kgalema Motlanthe's biography by Ibrahim Harvey. Its sale was just not moving. And it alone was being shunned by the buying branch delegates, some of them flush with easy-come BEE and tenderpreneurial new hot money. It was just not selling at all, confessed the candid young book trader.

Now how do you overwhelmingly vote into the top ANC leadership post a leader, whose biography you do not want to bank on, financially speaking? Don't we all often vote, not just with our feet, but our wallets and purses as well?

I knew from that early morning Vuyo Mbuli SABC interview with the young book trader that it was going to be a very poignant, rough, lonely and miserable political day for Kgalema Motlanthe. 

Which begs the pertinent question: Why were the ANC branch delegates in Mangaung so very clear and unswaying in their belief that they did not want Motlanthe to topple Zuma from the ANC leadership pedestal, if he truly is such an outstanding and sublime ANC leader that the ANC has produced 'in the last fifty years' (Sandile Memela)? Whose call is this to make anyway?

The answer, I presume, might have been suggested by Liza van Wyk, the chief executive of AstroTech Training in her Business Report article 'Are South Africa and America ready to choose real leaders?', which appeared on 01 November 2012. She wrote that 'a successful leader...generates enthusiasm.' The Mangaung branch delegates were never really enthused about, and never really passionately connected with, Motlanthe's presidential ambition, a very major leadership failure, in my leadership book, on Motlanthe's part.

This brings us to the very critical matter of why Motlanthe misread the Mangaung conference branch delegates so atrociously inaccurate? What does it say about his own strategic political judgment as a prominent ANC leader and undoubted strategist? What blind-sided his usually impassioned, cool, composed, very trusted and accurate assessment of ANC and SA politics and political dynamics?

After all, in the run up to the Mangaung conference, Motlanthe famously and evocatively characterized the Mangaung conference as 'a tipping point.' And in his Liliesleaf Address of 21 June last year, Motlanthe himself had boldly and loftily declared, exactly six months before Mangaung, that:

"...in politics the burden is always to read the situation accurately. It is a burden of leadership. If a leadership engages in horse racing and doodling and so on and does not analyse the situation, this leadership will get somewhere but it may not be in the right direction."

How come this advice of Motlanthe did not stand him in good stead in Mangaung in his leadership contest with Jacob Zuma? Was he 'doodling', to use his own florid expression? How come he 'got somewhere' in the Mangaung presidential contest with Zuma, but 'not in the right direction'? Did he take his eyes momentarily off the leadership contest ball? What does this say about his consistency in the application of his own leadership teachings, especially when his own personal interests and political ambition are involved? Does this astonishing leadership failure on his part make him the wrong man to lead the ANC Political Education School post-Mangaung, if he himself failed the most important political education leadership test of his entire political life?

It is worth looking briefly into what Motlanthe meant when he characterised the Mangaung conference as "a tipping point', a characterisation that was vigorously and publicly contested by Jacob Zuma, Motlanthe's ANC leader. Did Motlanthe 'read the situation accurately' (his words) with regard to describing the ANC elective conference in Mangaung last December as 'a tipping point'? Or was he unnecessarily exaggerating the situation for personal political gain and ideological expediency?

The answers to these questions have a direct and material bearing on another of the very profound and historic utterance of Motlanthe in his Liliesleaf Address, when he boldly stated with passionate conviction:

"The ANC has no monopoly over wisdom...And so we have to understand, in the absence of training members, the ANC will lose its character. The ANC will lose its prestige and authority to lead and the ANC will become ordinary. If it is ordinary the South Africans will of course choose to associate with other parties other than itself."

Is it Motlanthe's understanding that the ANC is fast becoming "ordinary" under the leadership of Jacob Zuma? Does he believe Jacob Zuma and his newly-elected Mangaung leadership cohort are inexorably leading the ANC to its dangerous 'tipping point'? Or does he believe that the ANC Mangaung conference last year finally tipped the ANC towards political irrelevance and self-destruction? Does he posits that, to all intents and purposes, the ANC has become 'ordinary' post-Mangaung?

If for nothing else, this wake-up call by Motlanthe re-affirms him as one of only a handful of major and courageous ANC leaders of today we all believe embodies the strictures of the historic ANC document 'Through the Eye of the Needle.' In fact Motlanthe's own impeccable integrity, intellectual prowess and moral incorruptibility makes him one of only three or so major ANC leaders of today who can effortless walk and pass through the biblical eye of the needle, with the ease of a hot knife cutting through butter.

But it must be asked as to why, if Motlanthe has no difficulty passing the ANC's own 'Through the Eye of the Needle' political and ethical benchmark, how come he failed so dismally and miserably to walk through the wide-open, and much more wider, famed gates of the University of Free State as an ANC Mangaung victor? 

Were Justice Malala and Prince Mashele (ibid) correct in their unflattering characterisation of what really drove the ANC branch delegates in Mangaung last December to vote for Jacob Zuma (again) and his newly-elected ANC leadership collective?

The Bible, in Matthews 16;26, poses the important rhetorical and moral question as to:

"For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (King James Cambridge Edition).

Using our contrarian human imagination, we should be able to insist to ask Motlanthe and the ANC Mangaung branch delegates as to:

"For what is a man profited if he shall gain his soul, and lose a top ANC leadership position?"

At an even much more profound and powerful level, Motlanthe, ANC leaders, other ANC branch members and all of us as South Africans, are required by the supreme national interests and future of our country and society to ask the important question: 

How did such a good man, such a good leader, such an outstanding ANC organic intellectual, such a deeply ethical being and such an irreproachable ANC elder statesman, Kgalema Motlanthe, lose the vote so spectacularly and emphatically in Mangaung in December last year?

Did Gandhi not teach us that "truth never damages a cause that is just?" Or does it in the ruling post-Mandela ANC?

Isaac Mpho Mogotsi is Executive Director, Centre of Economic Diplomacy In Africa (CEDIA). He can be followed on Twitter at @rabokala1

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