Deja vu! We have been here before! Prince Mashele has revived his now famous brand of vicious elitism, (Sowetan 23 February 2015 Jacob Zuma: Fit to be a herdsman, not a President).
In this anachronistic prism, only those who had seen the face of a teacher or lecturer are fit to govern or have any intellectual or leadership import. Were this any plausible, governments and countries would be run from college and university libraries.
Mashele resuscitates his old tired critique, more like a diss in the hip hop language, an infantile ridicule that President Jacob Zuma is not fit to govern purely because of lack of formal education. At another time in the same publication, Sowetan, he called the President a ruralitarian, whatever that is, given that Mashele also arrived in Gauteng from a rural village in Limpopo.
South Africa and the world have long come to appreciate the President as a self-taught, tried-and-tested organic intellectual whose lack of formal education has never been a hindrance in his life. But that is clearly difficult for Mashele to accept.
Mashele's precise words are: "His party, the ANC, elevated him to its highest office, regardless of his well-known moral and intellectual shortcomings." Mashele has become adept at saying the same thing in different ways. In essence, he is arguing that the leadership of society must be determined by the level of education.
We have already disabused Mashele of the notion that for one to be a leader one must have gone through tertiary education or possess formal qualifications and pointed out that such notion is elitist and flawed. It is also a tired perspective resurrected by President Zuma's opponents when they run out of arguments.
He has never accepted President Zuma as the President of this country and probably never will. More accurately, he refuses to accept the democratic outcomes of South Africa's political dispensation. He seeks to undermine democracy by looking with utter disdain at a whole population of people who voted for the ANC in general and President Zuma in particular to govern the Republic.
This kind of critique not only feeds to an anti-majoritarian onslaught and diversionary tactics of trying to win in the public domain what could not be won in the elections, but it effectively blocks from view all the achievements of government under President Zuma.
Such a critique does not see the role of the President in the re-engineering of government portfolios and the successes scored by government in the past few years. These successes demonstrate that South Africa is in good hands. They demonstrate that the collective led by President Zuma knows what it is doing, and that guided by the National Development Plan, this country will become an even much better place to live in than it already is now.
There can never be enough space to list the achievements of the democratic government in the past few years. The country is on track to achieve most of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by the 2015 deadline. We have made good progress with the eradication of extreme poverty, the achievement of universal primary education, attaining gender equality and the empowerment of women. We are reducing maternal and child mortality and continue to mobilise global partnerships for development.
Our country has scored dramatic successes in the fight against HIV and AIDS. To date, 2,7 million South Africans are on antiretroviral treatment, which has improved life expectancy. A total of 3 590 public health facilities are now initiating patients on antiretroviral treatment compared to 490 in February 2010.
One of our greatest success stories is the remarkable 67% reduction of mother-to-child transmission of HIV from 8% in 2008 to 2,6% in 2012. This is to mention just a small portfolio. When one mentions the growing numbers of new schools, clinics that are being built, three brand new universities, twelve training and vocational education colleges, housing, water or millions of homes that have been electrified.
In October, we celebrated the provision of water to 55 villages in Giyani in Limpopo, which has changed people's lives dramatically in the area. Life will soon change as well for 16 200 households in Umkhanyakude District in KwaZulu-Natal. For the first time in 30 years, they will get water from Jozini Dam, which was built in 1973 for agricultural use. There are many more water delivery projects nationwide.
Government has set aside R2,4 billion to assist in the delivery of over 200 000 houses for mining employees over the next two years. In addition, a programme has been launched to facilitate the training of 2000 young people for careers in the property sector in 2015/2016. Government has also launched a three year National Military Veterans Housing Programme to clear the backlog of close to 6000 military veteran households who require accommodation.
All these and many more achievements can only mean one thing, and that is that South Africa is a success story as the President pointed out in his SONA2015 reply. There are still serious challenges relating to poverty, inequality and unemployment, but we are doing well overall.
Most importantly, there is one undisputable fact. President Zuma is the legitimately elected leader of the people of South Africa until the next elections. Mashele must make peace with that and free himself and his heart from hatred and bitterness.
Bongani Majola is the Communications Director in the Presidency.
This article first appeared in the Sowetan.
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