COPE leadership must be about COPE and not leaders.
Some of us have done a great injustice by declaring openly our leadership preference without first having put reason to the choice. Of course we have reasons, but we took it for granted that, maybe all people understand these reasons. Unfortunately that is not the case.
This has seen individuals, through the pretense of structural mandate, making pronouncements in the media. These pronouncements are pronouncements of names without any reason given as to why such leaders will take Cope to the next level.
These pretentious pronouncements made mainly by desperate interim leaders who are eager to be king makers so that they can retain their positions, has attracted unsuspecting media.
What the media do not realize is that leadership is not about leaders, but about the organization. You then cannot have a National Congress in a new party like COPE without first going through a policy conference. Nominations cannot be done without having assessed the past activities of COPE and coming up with a detailed description on what type of leaders does Cope really need to enter into its local governance phase.
People who rush for the leadership nominations are 1. Adorers of ANC practices and envy everything that ANC does 2. Are desperate to retain their interim positions for various reasons 3. The Kings of this process are the people who brought us the compromise Presidential candidate; therefore they have no understanding of our society and South African body politics.
Some of these leaders have made leadership to be about leaders. They get desperate to an extent that they switch nominations or plainly manufacture nominations, thereby trampling on the same democratic process that they claim to so desperately need.
Here we have missed the point completely. Leadership contests must energize us to work hard to win the hearts of the members in our favor. So when the integrity of the process is compromised, members loose energy.
The case in point is Cope Gauteng SG, who runs all regional conferences, collects nominations, announces that he has been nominated for Chairperson of the province; he then also announces that his preferred presidential candidate is the preference. It does not end there, the individual then suspends everyone who could contest him and then he suspends everyone who questions his behavior. It does not end there; he then mobilizes to suspend his own Chairperson. This done so as to try and achieve the unachievable, becoming a chairperson with cooked nominations, making the cooked nominations a reality may mean, standing for elections in conference uncontested. Integrity completely compromised.
This is because; people reduce leadership to be about leaders and not the organization.
They are then crippled by making leadership choice without reason. For them leadership is about an individual ascending to a position, nothing else.
At the ANC conference in Polokwane, the then ANC President Thabo Mbeki warned about careerism, he then re-iterated than ANC members needed political education. Maybe we must borrow from that. COPE is a new party that has inherited the good and the bad from other political parties, not only that, there are members of COPE who have never been members of any other political party, thereby need political education as some of this members hold crucial and strategic positions in COPE.
COPE of course has another liability that it cannot avoid, that is the liability of leaders who were extreme failure in the organizations they come from. Our youth Movement is a good example of that. These leaders are excited by the positions they hold in Cope, that they never thought they would ever hold had they remained in their previous organizations. These same leaders are now demonizing the former chairperson of ANC; they should be turning him in a hero for their own good.
When Nelson Mandela was in Jail for 27 years, he never really knew what a hero he was. He was a hero by any measure, but to what extant? It is when he was released from jail that he realized that he was really a hero. South Africans rallied around him like he was a messier.
But it is not the ordinary people who made Nelson Mandela a hero, it is the believe and trust that ANC had in him. It is the opportunity that was given to him by ANC that ultimately turned Nelson Mandela into a global icon. This not discounting his leadership skills. It is the trust he got from ANC that gave him enough confidence to tap into his entire God given wisdom to ensure that the New South Africa takes off. Mandela's age was never an issue. No one ever said Nelson Mandela was too old to lead. It is this act that has seen ANC grows support year after year. Mandela's heroism has benefited ANC massively and it will keep on benefiting ANC for years to come.
When Terror Lekota served the divorce papers to the ANC, the whole South Africa was shaken. Millions of South Africans stood up and said yes to all the charges laid by Terror against ANC. It was an amazing response. At that moment, Terror was a hero; he had acted when millions of South Africans had given up on voting in the coming national elections.
Terror's action was heroic, it was brave.
Unfortunately, it was not only this action that would turn Terror into a hero. It was the organization that he was to start that had a responsibility to turn Terror into a hero that all COPE members can always draw strength from. It was COPE's responsibility to release Terror into the world as a legend that COPE itself will draw strength from for years to come.
This unfortunately has not yet happened. There are people within Cope who want to demonize him.
What this group of people doesn't know is that, an Organization by itself is neutral. It is the success of individuals within Cope that will make Cope a great organization. A great organization is an aggregate of great man and women who are within the organization and those who have been built by the organization and are now in other organizations or are serving in the society.
An organization that is an aggregate of failed individuals is doomed.
It is not good for COPE to reduce a legend like Terror to nothing. That may massage egos of some individuals who have personal agendas against him, but it can never be good for the organization.
Those who have misused and misunderstood the idea of democracy and that of Modernity have failed us dismally. They failed to understand that, for COPE to flourish Cope needs to grow organically.
It is this rush of modernity that had us introduce a completely new presidential candidate, thereby saying to Terror that, we have no confidence in him. We have even denied him an opportunity to go to parliament.
The hatred for Terror by some people is so bad that, they have made Gauteng a no-go area for him.
This type of treatment no individual can function properly with it. It is impossible for any person to perform when all odds are against you and your people have turned against you.
Most people have wonders, what happened to COPE? I have this day, the freedom day decided to reveal this and allow people space and time to reflect.
We all have the responsibility to make Cope work. We, however have to realize that, that is not going to happen overnight. We must allow Terror space and time to lead Cope in the next five year. We must support him by working and ensure that, when he leaves his Presidency he is a hero.
When one of Cope members becomes heroic, they are not heroic for themselves; they are heroic for the organization.
Terror Lekota still have the energy, the vision and the attitude to take Cope forward. His ideas of the Future South Africa are progressive. His thinking is beyond our times and that is why people misunderstood his explanation for BEE, mostly it is those people who are trapped in the past.
Cope however, is bigger than any individual. Cope will succeed if we as Cope members understand leadership to be about the organization and not leaders.
Sefu Sekgala is a member of Congress of the People
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