Jacob Zuma, permanence and change

One of the worst aspects of the ANC is the idea that it will govern “forever and ever”.

During Nelson Mandela’s funeral, President Jacob Zuma began his eulogy to Nelson Mandela by singing a song about how the whites had stolen the land.

He started his eulogy to a man who once said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting it to kill your enemies” by singing what is essentially a song of resentment.

The ANC can talk about how the crowd insulted Mandela’s memory when it booed president Zuma, but Zuma himself has done worse.

President Jacob Zuma said this:

"We want a huge majority this time because we want to change certain things that couldn't be changed with a small majority so that we move forward because there are certain hurdles. People talk about a constitution they have never seen. We saw that constitution." 

To that I answer – here is a link to the South African constitution, which Mandela fought for. It isn’t exactly a state secret, much as Zuma might pretend otherwise, and the language isn’t terribly obscure. Read it.

Go read the repeated excuse the current ANC gives for its failures.

Mandela when he was running for election didn’t say the ANC would rule forever, instead he said that if the ANC did to the people what the Apartheid government did, the people should do to the ANC what they did to the Apartheid government.

He did not believe in the permanence of one political brand, because such permanence inevitably ends up becoming a corrupted parody of itself.

Zuma meanwhile says the ANC will rule forever and ever.

Zuma also said the following: "Did you see how well the matriculants performed? We identified weaknesses in the education system and built a foundation. It will never have weaknesses again. Others want to find fault. No, our 'freedom' kids are smart. It's a sign that we're working hard.”

A diploma or degree does not make you educated. What makes you educated is the knowledge that those pieces of paper are supposed to signify you having.

Our mathematics and science education in our schools is awful – surveys have found us to be either the worst in the world in those subjects, or second only to Yemen.

We cannot proclaim our education system to be without weaknesses.

And when we eventually solve the problems we have now, we will never be able to say that the system will never have weaknesses again.

Because we live in a changing world, the knowledge our children will need in future will change. New and better ways of doing things will always arise, and we will always find times when the way we do things isn’t ideal. We do not need flawlessness, but adaptability.

Mandela was an agent of change, and that was the central theme to his government. Zuma’s central theme, aside from rampant corruption, has been an appeal to permanence, and that is pretty dangerous for our country.

We are not in a good place right now. We have massive poverty, we have children being raped and murdered, we have ambulances being attacked by thugs, our education system needs hard work that goes beyond the matric pass rate.

And corruption chokes so much of what we can do to solve any of it. The Nkandla scandal is not just some embarrassment like Bill Clinton getting a blowjob, or the fake interpreter at the Mandela memorial, it is over R200 million.

For context consider this – the ANC of the Mahikeng municipality claimed that it managed to feed 2 300 people Nandos for 10 days for just R45 000.

How many starving children in this country could we feed with that R200 million?

We don’t need permanence, we don’t need a system that can “never have weaknesses again”, we need change.

And aside from attacking the constitution, what change does President Jacob Zuma offer us?