SILENCE OF ELDERS IS COLLUSSION: REFLECTING ON THE MBEKI CORRESPONDENCE TO THE TOP SEVEN (minus) ONE.

Once South Africa starts to appreciate the chasm that separates insiders from outsiders in any setting and, more acutely, the inside story of and about the politics of our transition, we will quickly build the bridges that matter for our political order to advance further than expectations of its Constitution. It is a given and indisputable fact that we are a constitutional democracy. It is also a fact of life that our democracy, like the living beings it is written for, is a living system which should continually change and adapt to the exigencies of the moment. Because we are now regulated as citizens of one country, inevitably, the differential character of those that lead us, the system they operate within, and the ambitions of individuals assigned with the leadership function will settle for currencies of politics, otherwise called interests, that might redefine objectives our Constitution was intended for.

As we let go of the mechanical models of seeing ourselves as a society in perpetual contests and struggles or revolutionaries in a revolution with no end state, we should begin to see ourselves in much richer dimensions, appreciate our wholeness, and, hopefully, design interaction ecosystems and experiences that honour and make use of the great gift of who we are as humans. The essence of societal renewal through the ANC as a substrate, and arguably the nexus of all political and resource distribution life in South Africa, is to create entirely new ways of making the arrangements with which we have agreed to govern each other ‘to improve the quality of all citizens’.

 

Many claims, which are almost dogma, about the Thabo Mbeki Presidency, have yet to go through critical scrutiny and are unfortunately treated as established truisms. President Mbeki is one of the rare breeds of leaders South Africa has produced, and his utterances or open letters will always court society’s attention in all its forms. He is an institution of leadership as a person; his curation into the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute has made what he pronounces more institutional than personal. Because the politics of the ANC have recently been about breeding fact deniers of the true nature of South Africa's political accord and its resultant compromises, the form and character of being a leader of society as we knew the ANC to be have been laid to siege. It will thus be important for those in the cognitive elite circles and leadership, arguably most of you reading this blog, to understand that knowledge of our transition, and candour from real stalwarts, are our fragile democratic order's best defence. 

 

The truth about our transition and subsequent decisions our country took in the build-up to and after 1994 cannot volunteer itself outside the insatiable appetite of humanity to want to position itself on a pedestal of being the better of the rest, like some cohorts of ANC leadership are calibrating themselves in the middle of a turmoil all have been architects to. The clamouring for a legacy has created an ‘if it were us’, visible and coded preambles on several contributions by good stalwarts of the liberation movement. Instead, our deliberate relationship with information about what happened should liberate us from these cohorts' battles to prevail in an otherwise evolving context of understanding what really happened and, thus, what is happening about and inside the ANC or its variously captured Establishment.

 

If, as cognitive strata or collective in society, we start appreciating that our objective relationship with what is suitable for South Africa defines our form and character, we will seek continuous exposure and interrogation of our assumptions about our political order, its origins, and generally a whole lot of other realities facing society. We should thus not blindly trust what we are being dished out as truisms about our politics and economics. Still, we should maintain informed trust in consensual conclusions of the institutional leadership realities of our present and unencumbered individual leaders therein. 

 

With the status and influence some individuals, and Mbeki in particular, still command in society, and their proneness to factional political abuse, we should be wary of their otherwise truthful pronouncements that might in character be a compromise of decorum expected or otherwise at that level. This should, however, not be vitiating of their conscientious roles when none in society can speak certain truths to power. For as long as we do so, understanding that the more diversity they dish out to us, the more keynotes of our social condition and opinion we will harvest. Most ANC leaders have displayed talent in one of the highly productive political activities, yet they are tough to pin down when there are agreed terms and diverse outlooks. Diverse in perspective as they all have been, they were able to keep the centre holding, even for questionable reasons. This is the context this rendition reflects on the Mbeki correspondence.

 

To the extent that Thabo Mbeki made reference to Cyril Ramaphosa’s statement that "the ANC may not stand alone in the dock, but it does stand as accused number one", he stuck to an established decorum by the incumbent ANC President of no knuckles are going to be spared for the very movement and leaders society is defending as we advocate for its renewal. Unless the established rule of law process is allowed to prevail on the ‘Phala-Phala’ matter, as Mbeki argues, and everything about it rests on evidence, we won't flush our political order of these strange breeds of leadership. A leadership infested with people who mostly reject those aspects of our Constitution and political order that refute their often mythical beliefs about the borrowed public power society has bestowed on them. In that respect, Thabo Mbeki should be embraced as the spokesperson of the cognitive elite and the people of South Africa needed from within the inner circles of the ANC Establishment. 

 

With politics not being an exact science, only some of us will ultimately know the true nature of what is at the core of disintegration at the centre of our national politics and, thus, the political order. However, what should be a constant in our shared lives as the leader of the society brigade, is always to subject what we ideate, read, and are fed in the national discourse spaces to constant interrogation and challenge. At our peak should be how the evolution of truth defines our nature. 

 

If we as a cognitive collective are the readiest to admit and embrace our mistakes, only then can the DNA of seeking progress permeate those that get away with lies, and we had been allowing them. It should rather be our posture always to lose a debate than be suppressed debate. If we allow ourselves, as a cognitive collective, and thus the emerging leader of society brigade, to come to a halt as experts and the advance detachment against ignorance and lie, society will halt.

 

President Mbeki might be correct in all matters he raises, but we should agree on why we say so or differ. It should be our second nature to do so. CUT!!!

 

Wa twaa!!