MAKHUDU SEFARA

The raid this week of the private residence of former US president Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, reveals the importance of getting the right people through the gates of power.

In companies, it’s almost like the CEO’s responsibility to ensure he employs the right people, for we know it’s easier to lead talented, hard-working and innovative employees than to manage demotivated, bitter and toxic ones. Sort the chaff at the gate, say management scholars.

Similarly, we need to sort the chaff as the 30th anniversary of our democratic dispensation approaches. We have seen the best and worst of the ANC. We appreciated Mandela’s management of the transition, Mbeki’s economic tutelage, appreciated how the cookie crumbles under Zuma and then learnt what false hope looks like under Ramaphosa.

What’s unfortunate for the oldest liberation movement in Africa is that it won’t be able to get away with false promises of “jobs, jobs, jobs” or “a better life for all” because its record in office is public. From Mandela to Ramaphosa, we would have seen them in action and inaction. As South Africans decide who to let through the gates of the Union Buildings, they would not be swayed by lofty notions of how your fight against apartheid in exile or within internal structures is supposed to mean your avowed commitment to democratic ideals. We now know you may have spent 15 years in the bush, but that doesn’t mean jack about your commitment to sorting out potholes or ensuring Eskom functions properly.

For the most part, I believe, 2024 will be about who is best placed to resolve the country’s many intractable challenges. Who is able to organise their thoughts in a coherent way, not simply to appeal to the masses but to put on show their capability. While incumbency will be a double-edged sword for the ANC, the opposition parties too will find a nation weary of empty promises. And so, hopefully, they will look more closely at the performances of these opposition parties before entrusting them with their votes.

In our politics, we have an enemy at the gates sort of thing, except the enemy is professing he/she is a hard-worker, embraces diversity, fights corruption and embodies true values of representatives of the people. The big assignment for 2024 is about making sure the people who present themselves as worthy of the top posts are, in fact, worthy. It’s about asking ourselves what happens after President Cyril Ramaphosa, because whichever way you look at his tenure, he’s gone. He may survive the battles within the ANC but lose the war in 2024.

When the ANC seemingly can’t manage corruption and the DA can’t manage diversity, where then should we look? Is it the Rivonia Circle? Mmusi Maimane or even Mogoeng Mogoeng?

But who comes after him? Is it ANC treasurer-general Paul Mashatile, also the party’s acting secretary-general as Ace Magashule fights a losing battle in the courts? Is Mashatile the right fit for the challenges we face as a country? Has he said or done anything that makes us believe he will do better than the worst president we’ve had, Jacob Zuma? It must trouble us that the standard of leadership is set this low. Perhaps it’s a trauma response! And what of the political rumour-mongering that identifies him as the don of the so-called Alex Mafia, a motley crew whose influence transcends Gauteng?

Or is it the DA’s ol’John Steenhuisen? Does it matter that his journey to, and stay at, the top of his party has led to the unprecedented number of senior black leaders resigning? It is well and good when they deselect the DA, for they have other options. But what happens when he is in charge of the country and we can’t deselect our country until the next elections? Is poor Steenhuisen overall bad simply because his party can’t hold on to black leaders? Is this too not simply lowering the bar because Steenhuisen is not capable, or perhaps willing, to up his performance?

Will Julius Malema, president of the EFF, rise to the occasion? He knows the DA is leading all three metro councils in Gauteng thanks in part to his political benevolence. Could he extend the same magnanimity to Steenhuisen to ascend to the top post at the Union Buildings? Put more crassly: 30 years after the removal of a white racist president, will Malema, the Africanist, help return a white leader who can’t hold on to black members, to the Union Buildings in 2024? Stranger things have happened.

When the ANC seemingly can’t manage corruption and the DA can’t manage diversity, where then should we look? Is it the Rivonia Circle? Mmusi Maimane or even Mogoeng Mogoeng? The state of the nation address under Mogoeng might sound more like a home cell meeting — and that’s not a bad thing given the challenges we have been through.

On a serious note though, Trump is back in the news because of White House secret records stolen as he left office. The FBI, led by director Chris Wray, who he appointed and described as “a man of impeccable credentials”, raided his home on Monday. Trump is one of the worst in recent history that the US electorate has let through the gate without proper checks. The theft of the records is not the only investigation he is facing. He still has tax fraud claims to deal with in addition to the barbarism that was the January 6 insurrection that saw him kicked off Twitter for good. How does a president steal documents? Must we be checking the bunkers of all our former presidents?

With Trump, everything is possible. Some sections of the US are only now realising how they dodged the bullet. Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe was asked what it would take to acquire a search warrant for a former US president’s private home and he responded: “The earth would have to move. It would have been signed off by a judge and all top levels of the DoJ [department of justice], the proof must be enormous.”

We know this. We have been here. And despite all of this, our Zuma, like Trump, remains popular. We must guard the gates. We have experimented enough in the almost 30 years of democracy. In 2024, we need the real deal.