Dr Allan Boesak says that like everyone else he has 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. Picture: File
South Africa is ruled by a gang of robbers, says politician and anti-apartheid activist Dr Allan Boesak in a letter addressed to businessman and former United Democratic Front (UDF) secretary-general Popo Molefe, who had extended an invitation to Boesak to attend the UDF’s 40th anniversary celebration on August 20.
In his letter Boesak states: “In 1985, in those state-of-emergency days, I made a poster of the words of African Church Father Augustine. ‘A government that does not know justice is no more than a gang of robbers.’ That was as true in the 5th century as it was in the 20th. It is as true now, in the 21st, under Cyril Ramaphosa and the ANC. We are indeed ruled by a gang of robbers.”
He said across the country there was virtually no disagreement on what South Africans were facing right now as a result of governmental mismanagement over 30 years, that something needed to be done urgently, and that South Africans needed to be united and inspired toward action.
“So now, some in the ANC realise the enormity of that mistake, for that is the ‘spirit of the UDF’ you are now all looking for. That, however, is the very spirit you have tried to banish, 32 years ago. That is why there are some now regurgitating (in my presence!) the false claim that the UDF was, in actual fact, the ‘internal wing’ of the ANC, its own child, so to speak.
“I find that repetition of the old National Party propaganda trope unspeakably cynical, for what does it make you when you are the one who killed your own child? And can people, who never speak of miracles, but rather of ‘the balance of forces’ and their own cleverness, now claim to believe in something miraculous like a resurrection?” reads Boesak’s letter.
Boesak said more importantly, a spirit had to find a home. “I do not believe that the spirit of the UDF will find a home in the ANC as it is today. That spirit is indeed desperately needed, but it has to find a home within the people, like in 1983, from all walks of life, across the boundaries of race, pigmentation, religion, language and culture, and like in 1983, outside of institutionalised politics.
“Not connected to a factionalised, self-centred, vote-seeking but not people-serving political organisation that since its return has been smothering every possibility for a just, equitable, inclusive, truly non-racial, democratic society, when it reintroduced those despised apartheid racial categories that we had so marvellously overcome in the Black Consciousness Movement and in the UDF.”
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” were 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 chairperson 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 had 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.