Last Sunday I attended a
service at the Park Avenue Methodist Church in New York. The sermon, by the
Reverend Cathy Gilliard, was based on the story of the orphaned Jewish girl Esther,
who was chosen to be the queen of Persia. When the king's right-hand man
devised a plot to kill all the Jewish people because Esther's uncle, Mordecai,
refused to bow down to him, Esther continued to hide her identity. But Mordecai
called on Esther to stop playing it safe and speak out on behalf of her people:
"Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as
this."
It is a poignant story that
reminds us of the moral responsibility to speak out against injustice and
corruption. As I listened to Gilliard, I recalled another woman's voice – one
that has plagued me since the launch of this year's "women's month"
at the University of the Free State. It was the voice of a member of the ANC
Women's League hero-worshipping President Jacob Zuma.
The occasion was the fifth
annual Charlotte Maxeke memorial lecture. If you were at the university that
day, you would have been forgiven for thinking there was a film crew there,
re-enacting apartheid-era scenes of police violence. The large police van and
other police vehicles parked on the perimeter of the Callie Human Centre, where
Zuma was to deliver the lecture, ominously resembled a scene from the past.
Inside the large hall, the
scene was just as gloomy. Police in "riot uniform", hands on their
rifles, paraded along the upper level above the stage. At strategic points and
on the steps leading to the upper level, to the right and left of the stage
where Zuma was sitting, conspicuously young-looking soldiers in camouflage gear
and maroon berets were standing watch in pairs, unarmed – or, at least, with no
visible firearms.
These young soldiers were
not the apartheid government's army of conscripts about to be deployed to
"the border" or "the townships". The armed police on the
upper level were not to be mistaken for apartheid police, who were quick to
shoot black demonstrators. Or that is what I thought until the
"script" of the military forces around the president in the hall
played out.
Zuma's day
The Free State ANC Women's
League had organised the event to honour the memory of Maxeke, but this script
was not about her legacy. It was, rather, a chance for the league to show its
adoration of the president. Every detail of the event was orchestrated as a
build-up to his speech, which he delivered by reading Maxeke's biography.
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, recently elected as
the first woman to lead the African Union, would have delivered a more
profound message, but was only given time to "say a few words".
This was Zuma's day – his
day of being celebrated by the league. The league member chairing the event
came on stage to tell the audience that the president would be entering the
hall soon and there had to be absolute silence when he walked in. We were given
candles, which I thought represented the light Maxeke shone selflessly to open
the way for the formidable women's movement against injustice. But a different
purpose for the candles was soon revealed.
Volunteers went round the
hall, lighting the candles. "Shhhhh, shhhhh," the chairperson
implored the restless audience. "There should be no noise when the
president enters the hall. The lights will be turned off and only the sound of
the burning candles should be heard," she said. As we waited, burning
candles in hand, several announcements about the imminent entry of the
president were made.
Watching this theatre and
listening to the chairperson telling us about the "forces of evil"
raging outside (a reference to the anti-Zuma songs being sung outside the hall)
and urging us to "pray for our president", it struck me that the
league no longer embodied the spirit of the noble fight against the injustices
suffered by marginalised women.
In post-apartheid South
Africa the league has lost the moral freedom that defined it in the past, when
it was driven by a desire to widen the horizons of possibility for women of
colour in our country. Today's league is more concerned with fighting to save
Zuma's political career or the careers of members' comrades.
An uncritical
"love" for Zuma was unmistakable in the music performed that day. At
first, the songs were a mixture of light dance and choral music with no real
significance. But the music changed when Zuma approached the hall, giving
symbolic meaning to the quest to save Zuma's political career by fighting the "enemy"
– the voices of dissent.
As Zuma's procession entered
the hall, a talented young trio sang the words from Puccini's Nessun Dorma
aria, often used at World Cup ceremonies as an emphatic statement of victory:
Vincerò! Vincerò! Vincerò! (I shall win!).
Symbolic imagination
This orchestrated symbolic
statement glossed over the fact that, in the opera Turandot, the promised
vincerò comes only after an act of mass death. Thus, in the terrain of the
symbolic imagination, we might consider that, as Zuma's bid for another
presidential term moves towards victory, there may be destruction along the
way. Hence the importance of the prayers for which the league pleaded:
"Please pray for our president."
This prayer component was
captured by the song It Is Well with My Soul, sung by gospel singer Sechaba
just before Zuma came to the podium. The song's original meaning conveys an
unwavering trust in God in the face of life's challenges. Listening to
Sechaba's voice booming through the hall with so much power and emotion and
watching him projected on the large screen in front, I was left breathless.
There was Sechaba on the screen, in a pink golf shirt and khaki pants, singing
"It is well with my soul" with joy on his face – while at the same
time passing in front of two young "soldiers" in camouflage uniform,
wearing maroon berets and standing at attention, stern-faced and hard-mouthed.
One saw then that in reality
Zuma does not put his trust only in God and that all is not well with the
president's soul.
These images made a deep
impression on me. The scripts created collectively by the ANC and its alliance
partners since the days of Zuma's legal battles – scripts created to save him
from rape and corruption charges – have played out in a ceaseless spiral.
From the public dramas
around Julius Malema to Bheki Cele's militarisation of the police, from the
Marikana massacre and the arrest of student Chumani Maxwele for allegedly
giving Zuma the finger for the killing of Andries Tatane during a protest in
Ficksburg, to the looting of public funds to transform Zuma's homestead into a
palace complex – all these point to the crisis of moral leadership in our
country.
Bleak landscape
It is a gruesome tale – how
we have moved so rapidly from the era of hope to the bleak landscape ushered in
by Zuma's ascent to power, how we find ourselves in a state characterised by
poor service delivery, major corruption at all levels of government, increasing
violence against women and many other problems that have torn apart the moral
fibre of our society. What can it all mean?
What if it all comes down to
this – that at such a time we are all called to step up, as Esther did when she
saw the destruction about to befall her people?
"When we remember who
we are," Gilliard said at the New York church, "when we stand at the
intersection where potential meets necessity and necessity meets possibility –
and we all will stand there at some point in our lives – we stand there and
search ourselves. At best, we refuse – absolutely refuse – to live beneath our
potential."
We choose, instead, to be
courageous, to interrupt the spiral into the tragic dramas playing out in our
communities. How I wish the voice of the ANC Women's League could be restored
to that courageous place. How I pray for South African citizens to march in
step on the path that leads to hope – hope that South Africa can regain the
dignity it had at the birth of our democracy.
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is
senior research professor at the University of the Free State
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