Dr Allan Boesak says there is virtually no disagreement on what South Africans are facing right now as a result of governmental mismanagement over 30 years. Picture Brenton Geach/File
ACROSS the country, there is virtually no disagreement on what South Africans are facing right now as a result of governmental mismanagement over 30 years, that something needs to be done urgently, and that our people need to be united and inspired toward action.
This is according to South African politician and anti-apartheid activist, Dr Allan Boesak, in a letter addressed to businessman and former UDF secretary-general Popo Molefe, who had extended an invitation to Boesak to attend the United Democratic Front’s (UDF’s) 40th anniversary celebration on August 20.
In turning down the invitation, Boesak said: “I have been confirmed in my instinctive hesitation about the group you represent. That is the group you yourself have identified as the so-called ‘Defend our Democracy’ group. In theory, I find little fault with your analysis of our situation. It is indeed as dire as you describe it in that very well-written document. So the problem is not so much the ‘what’, or the ‘how’ It is the ‘who’.”
He said that like everyone else, he had been deeply concerned about the open factionalism in the ANC, the divisionism it caused, and the toxic effect it had on the country’s politics.
“This is one of the reasons why I, over the last two years or so, have consistently declined every invitation from that group to speak at their public meetings. I did not want to be associated with any faction in the ANC – not then, and not now.”
Boesak said he declined those invitations also because he found that while “Defend our Democracy” was very vocal in their condemnation of former president Jacob Zuma, and rightly so, they were curiously quiet when President Cyril Ramaphosa’s questionable actions began to surface.
“I was already disturbed when Mr Ramaphosa blandly began to speak of ‘nine wasted years’ under Zuma when, in fact, he was right there, as deputy president, and as chair of the Deployment Committee, to say nothing of his role vis-à-vis oversight of the state enterprises.
“That refusal to take any responsibility at all, while the ANC is so obsessed with ‘collective decision-making’ when it suits them, is a political Pontius Pilate washing-of-the-hands attitude that has now become disastrously ingrained in the ANC. It is a prime example of the pseudo-innocence I talked about already in 1976: the feigning of ignorance while reaping the benefits of abusive power and systemic injustice.
“It is the fig leaf for political chicanery and moral recklessness that is the open door to that impunity that has destroyed our people’s trust in our democratic institutions from Parliament to the courts. No wonder his was a ‘dawn’ where the sun never rose,” Boesak said.
Yet through all this, in scandal after scandal, “Defend our Democracy” did not say a word, he said. “Certainly no word that the South African public could hear, that could clear away the fog. Not even with, for the country's deeply humiliating allegations of the hidden monies surfacing, and with the Ngcobo Commission stating clearly that the President has a case to answer.
“With that scandalous vote in Parliament I still did not hear a word, saw no call for accountability, or responsibility, certainly no call for public protest action. Was our democracy not then, as it is still now, under severe attack? Those who tried to do their constitutional duty were either publicly debased, intimidated, or suspended. Still, not a word. There are few things so detrimental to the health of democracy as selective indignation.”
Boesak said he had noted the reaction of people whenever he spoke, so he now knows that there is almost complete consensus on these matters and the utter failure of the ANC to give meaning to the country’s democracy.
“An invitation from the Youth Desk of the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa on March 21 to speak to their youth on the topic, ‘The Plight of Our Democracy: What Have We Lost?’ just about sums it up. What I wanted to do this time was to get confirmation on my views about this commemoration year and specifically the plans you and your group have for the ‘action’ you envisage,” he said.
Boesak said the ANC could no longer hide the fact that it was a factionalised, paralysed party, mesmerised by greed, and hypnotised by its own delusions, chief of which is the myth that it could ‘correct itself’. “But, as the Bible says: ‘Your sins will find you out.’ As the 2024 elections draw near, the ANC has not only run out of ideas, or courage, or vision.”
He said the ANC had outrun its nobility, in the process leaving the people behind, as in the picture drawn by the prophet Isaiah, almost 3 000 years ago: “We grope like the blind along a wall … we stumble at noon as in the twilight …” All because “justice is far from us”.
Forty years after the formation of the UDF, the question on how to revive the spirit of the organisation was posed and reflected on during a commemorative programme in May. The reflective commemorative dialogue was hosted by the Institute of African Alternatives, Surplus Radical Books and supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Efforts to reach Molefe for comment drew a blank.