reads Tutu’s collection of sermons and his experiences in politics as a priest, one realises that he, unlike many of the struggle priests, remained true to his calling. Throughout his career, he chose God above Mammon.
In his preface to the book Aliens in the Household of God, Tutu reveals a man very few of us know – an unusual response from an elder breaking new ground in his compassionate, Christ-like response to the issue of homosexuality. Why is the Anglican church kicking up so much polemical dust about a matter Tutu has total clarity on? Tutu is a mensch and any attempt to vilify him will boomerang.
I have seen many marches where Tutu locked arms with other religious leaders – such as Bishop Mvume Dandala, the Rev Lionel Louw, the Rev Colin Jones, the Rev Allan Boesak, the Rev Chris Ahrends, the Rev Frank Chikane, Rabbi Cyril Harris, Imam Gasant Solomons, Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa and the Rev Courtney Sampson – against the repressive apartheid state.
I have yet to see one of these clerics come out in defence of him. The courage that prevailed before 1994 has dissipated, with the clergy seeking greener pastures in the secular world, reluctant to criticise lest they jeopardise their chances of benefiting from the state’s largesse. Herein lies the demise of the prophetic voice, kept alive mainly by Tutu.
Business Day July 27 2006
I AM glad that Cyril Ramaphosa’s name has been added to the list of African National Congress (ANC) presidential hopefuls for 2007. His candidature would be a pleasant neutraliser to the alternatives, who are too ghastly to contemplate. Many might unfairly disqualify him on the grounds that he is too rich for the job and that he might use his economic power to enrich himself even further, or use it to leverage resources for his empowerment pals or the ANC, in the same way that Silvio Berlusconi, tycoon and prime minister of Italy, became notorious.
Berlusconi was a prime example of how a convergence of business and political interests is bad in politicians. Big business, at the best of times, behaves like a whore. It attaches its body to any government as long as it can use it to further its own ends.
The evidence since 1994 has been disconcerting. The very same businesses that sucked up to the apartheid government are now cosying up to the ANC and have been quite ruthless in using the ruling party in a system of patronage that is rather embarrassing to behold.
For every corrupt politician, there is a corrupter, and complicit businesses often recede quietly into oblivion when corruption is exposed, with the government portrayed as the only villain in the transaction.
Big business in Zimbabwe generally supported Robert Mugabe to the hilt until they could no longer sustain the relationship and left quietly when his largesse dried up.
Ramaphosa’s political credentials are well known and I need not list them here. But what needs to be emphasised is that while his rapid rise to wealth keeps being mentioned, people forget his proven track record as head of the Constitutional Assembly. His management of the constitutional process during a tight schedule from June 1994 to May 1996 is worth the highest order SA can bestow on anybody.
Putting together a constitution in a politically fractured country was a new and risky undertaking for SA. Politics was volatile and even though the 1994 election was relatively peaceful, tensions remained. The right wing had just emerged from a brutal destabilisation process; similarly, the resistance movement had to cease all revolutionary activity.
Politicians were still fighting about the property clause; the issue of abortion and customary rights threatened to derail gender solidarity; the debate around proportional versus the constituency-based electoral systems was heated; federalism versus centralised control provoked divergent responses; yet Ramaphosa held the process together with his amiable, gentle, yet decisive demeanour.
His relationship with Roelf Meyer was legendary. He managed the wide chasm between the ANC, the National Party, the Democratic Party, the Freedom Front, the Pan Africanist Congress and others with aplomb.
He could defuse the growing tension between divergent views with even a lame joke and have everyone in stitches. He pulled in the expertise and resources of the best constitutional experts into the six theme committees and I shall never forget the flurry of activity, debates, conferences and workshops between the politicians and the nongovernmental organisations trying to get to grips with what a truly representative South African constitution would be, with a Bill of Rights that would be unique to SA.
What this entire exercise demonstrated was the willingness of political actors across wide divisions to work together and reach a compromise. People whom many of us wrote off as dinosaurs were now in the fold and talking to each other. Four months before the May 8 1996 deadline, 68 issues were unresolved and there was great concern that the deadline would not be reached. Even by April 22 1996 there was no consensus on the death penalty, the appointment of judges and the attorney-general, language, local government, proportional representation and the floor-crossing issue.
By April 1996, there had been 298 amendments but the entire process went swimmingly under Ramaphosa’s capable leadership, so that by May 8 1996 the text was completed. March 1997 was the culmination of a difficult process, ending with more than seven million copies of the constitution distributed in eleven languages all over the country.
For these reasons, Ramaphosa is ideally suited to bring that experience to bear on bringing the ANC together again, with its political contenders, into an inclusive society united in its goal to drag SA out of poverty.
Ramaphosa has economic power. What he wants now, it seems, is political power, not for its own sake, but to use it to take SA in a different direction – eliminating economic inequality, creating a culture of tolerance, and building a healthy civil society that will work together to support and sustain a different kind of democracy to the one we have now.
He would not hesitate to bring committed activists and experts back into the fold to utilise their skills in ways that would benefit SA. The task is not easy, given that he is perceived to be a ruthless Randlord, but I hope that by now he is so tired of making money that he will truly focus on the poor, the unemployed, the landless and the huge army of HIV-infected people.
Lest I forget, Ramaphosa had a fair amount of political groupies who swooned over him, obeying his every beck and call. Everyone wanted his attention and while he loved the grovelling, work got done around him. If he stands for president, we might just be in for one of the most exciting dispensations this country has seen. I am sure the country will rally around him despite some minor misgivings.
Business Day August 5 2003
‘He towers above all of us with his humility and intrinsic dignity.’ – Nelson Mandela. Walter Sisulu’s passing, sadly, is the beginning of the end of an era in the African National Congress (ANC).
Described as a postmodern feminist by his daughter-in-law, Elinor Sisulu, one can comfortably call him the grande dame (I don’t know the male version) of ANC politics. Amina Cachalia called him a selfless, nonmaterialistic comrade, a sentiment echoed by Ahmed Kathrada. George Bizos praised him for his sacrificial service, a model to young people, who would do well to imitate him.
Former president Nelson Mandela movingly talks about how their lives were intertwined for the past 62 years. ‘We shared the joy of living, and the pain. Together we shared ideas, forged common commitments. We walked side by side through danger and tribulation, nursing each other’s bruises, holding each other up when our steps faltered. Together we savoured the taste of freedom. His absence has carved a void. A part of me is gone.’
What an epitaph.
Mandela’s pain at losing a bosom pal is poignant and one senses his apprehension that Sisulu’s death signals the slow demise of a camaraderie typical of comradeship in those days.
Reading Sisulu’s history, one cannot help but notice