Nothing, it seems, is indicative of the depth of the challenges faced by SA more than the story about the fate of ANC Women’s League president Bathabile Dlamini being in the hands of the ANC’s national officials led by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The issue is not so much that she is a convicted perjurer but her inability to appreciate the imbroglio created by her decision to wait to be thrown out of her position as a leader of the ANC’s women formation.
Why must it be an issue for a president to decide? Is this because she believes that in spite of her conviction in the Johannesburg magistrate’s court she is still the embodiment of the quality of leadership befitting a ruling party? Is it a case of the absence of shame? Or could it be that Dlamini and the ANC do not believe perjury is a serious offence? After all, Dlamini did not step aside along with other ANC leaders when the step-aside rule, which led to the suspension of ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule and others, was implemented months ago.
ANC treasurer-general Paul Mashatile told the nation on Monday: “We are not delaying. If the president was around today (Monday), we would have met today.” The magistrate’s court is expected to decide on Friday whether Dlamini will get a fine or a jail sentence.
The bigger problem though is what Dlamini represents. She embodies a calibre of leaders who care about themselves, who lie about tenders, who have no shame, who don’t put the people of the country first. She represents the type of leaders who have helped create problems for our country, rather than serve the nation. The type, to say the obvious, who must go.
Just the other day, Stats SA told us the number of unemployed South Africans increased by 278,000 to 7.9-million, which is 35.3% in the fourth quarter of 2021. This, of course, excludes the number of South Africans who have given up on the possibility of finding jobs. The hopeless lot. When they are taken into consideration, as they ought to, we have a 46% unemployment rate. To some, these are just numbers. For those directly affected, these are human beings going through a very tragic period of their lives.
The bigger problem though is what Bathabile Dlamini represents.
It is one thing to host investment conferences and create a veneer of hope, but the hard, cold truth is that almost 50% of people who should be actively participating in this economy are simply not.
We believe many of our challenges are to be found in how — and by whom — we are led. Not too long ago, these included Dlamini. The state capture reports by chief justice-elect Raymond Zondo are laden with names of those charged with leadership but whose conduct, just like Dlamini’s, is at odds with what this country needs.
Unemployment is just one of the many challenges we face. The task of transforming the country, particularly making the economy inclusive, requires a leadership cohort not blinded by lies and self-deception like Dlamini. It requires leaders not blinded by trappings of power but those motivated by a desire to help infuse life in our faltering economy and dignity in the lives of millions.
If Dlamini were anything close to what a leader ought to be, she would save the ANC the indignity of having to fire her. She would understand that she has brought shame not just to her family as a convict, but has also embarrassed the national government departments she used to mislead as minister. It’d be plain that she is a source of shame for women in the ANC whose rights and promotion she should have fought for. She’d understand that as a convict, she has lost the right to stand in any public platform to claim to advance what is good and noble about gender transformation. The unemployment statistics show that women, especially black women, bear the harshest effects of unemployment. What is most tragic is that they have the likes of Dlamini as leaders.
Ramaphosa seemed to get the link between government performance and the state of the ANC when, in his closing remarks at the ANC NEC meeting at the weekend, he said: “There is a direct dialectical relationship between the revolutionary movement and the state of government. If we do not have a strong ANC, we cannot have an effective government.”
We agree, to the extent that the statement relates to where the ANC is in charge. But now that it is evident that Dlamini will not, of herself, do the right thing, we expect Ramaphosa to fire her — or risk the ANC becoming increasingly irrelevant to many South Africans.
