Our giggling president shames South Africa

Geoff Sifrin

TAKING ISSUE

Zuma scolded South Africans last week as if he were talking to children, about the proper pronunciation of Nkandla – “Nkhaaandla”. Then he giggled at being absolved by his police minister from repaying any state money spent upgrading his private homestead – with its swimming pool, visitors’ centre, cattle kraal and other features defined as “security” necessities – R246 million and growing. This scandal will symbolise his legacy.

In 1998 Mandela addressed a Moral Regeneration Summit convened with the National Religious Leaders Forum. He said: “The symptoms of our spiritual malaise… include the extent of corruption… where office and positions of responsibility are treated as opportunities for self-enrichment…”

The summit included a code of conduct for “persons in positions of responsibility”, concentrating on integrity. After the 1999 election, Thabo Mbeki became president and his new deputy president, Jacob Zuma, was allocated responsibility for pursuing a moral initiative between religious and political leaders. In 2002 the Moral Regeneration Movement was officially launched under Zuma’s patronage.

South Africans can count many huge successes since the end of apartheid, including the maintenance of a vigorous democracy. We have reason for pride. However, Mandela’s hope for moral regeneration has not been realised when it comes to corruption, which seems to have washed through every fibre of our society.

South Africa is a religious nation, which is why Mandela and other leading political figures at the time hoped that a partnership with the faith communities’ leaders could turn things around, based on tenets of honesty and integrity.

The vast majority of South Africans are Christian – 74,1 per cent of the population according to the 1996 National Census, followed by much smaller communities of Muslims, Hindus and Jews. Other religions are also to be found, such as small groups of Buddhists and Baha’is. The influence of African Traditional Religion is strongly felt in many black church communities.

But today the voice of the religious sector is not heard with the insistence it was then. Politicians and faith leaders seem to have largely gone their separate ways. One does hear occasional expressions of protest about national crises from figures such as the Rhema Church’s Ray McCauley, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein and some others, but it’s more like random potshots than a focused strategy.

Maybe it’s time for another Moral Summit? Would religious leaders of sufficient gravitas come together in numbers to call the politicians to account? Could they find a common voice in the absence of a leader like Mandela?

Within the ANC there are still many good people. Why are they silent as their president embarrasses the country they fought for? One of the encouraging things that is happening – perhaps Zuma’s performance will accelerate it – is that increasingly, members of the old guard of anti-apartheid activists and intellectuals are coming out of the woodwork and condemning the ANC for what it has become – a disgrace to its former self.

But a new generation of activists is needed who will call things as they see them and have the energy to change them for the better.

South Africans no longer bask in the glow of the Mandela days. Their image has been soiled by things like corruption, xenophobic attacks on foreigners, Eskom’s inability to keep the lights on, and other events that would have made Madiba roll his eyes in shame. The evolving Fifa corruption scandal looks like it might be another stain.

Our giggling president of today is a caricature – a far cry from the Moral Regeneration Movement.

It is up to South Africans on their own now to steer this rudderless ship into better waters before it really hits the rocks. There will not be another Mandela. To our credit, we have strong tools to draw on, including a vigorously free press which reports widely on corruption, and the fact that large parts of our citizenry are outraged by it.

Geoff Sifrin is former editor of the SAJR. He writes this column in his personal capacity.