PALI LEHOHLA | The likes of Mavuso Msimang you let go, their ideas you keep

The departure of Ntate Mavuso Msimang from the Veterans’ League has left not only South Africa but the world talking. In Basutoland when Makalo Khaketla left the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP) to join the Marematlou Freedom Party in the early 1960s, BCP leader Ntsu Mokhehle said “people will leave, but ideas we shall keep, so let Khaketla leave, but his good ideas we shall keep”. After 28 years, which included the stolen election of 1970 by Leabua Jonathan of the Basutoland National Party (BNP) with military assistance and intervention by the British and the Boers, the arrest of Mokhehle in 1970 and many a leader and rank and file of the BCP, years of exile and a stint with apartheid South Africa, Mokhehle came to a resounding victory of all constituencies in Lesotho in 1993. He left after serving one term and handed over to Pakalitha Mosisili, who also enjoyed a resounding election victory in 1998.

Many would agree that people are dispensable, a lesson I was taught by Mokhehle. While I was serving in Bophuthatswana in April of 1994, the prime minister invited me for a discussion.

The meeting was cordial but pointed to the outcome. The prime minister invited me to be the commissioner of the Independent Electoral Commission of Lesotho. I was quite overwhelmed. I had just acquired South African citizenship earlier in the year and had three years remaining in the training programme of my staff at Bophuthatswana Statistics, readying them to take over. The invitation was a big disruption, in particular to the training programme. I disclosed these constraints to the prime minister. The one on citizenship was resolvable because I could just rescind the South African citizenship. The challenge of training staff needed a minimum of six months for the transition. The prime minister assessed what I had tabled as my conditions. After a moment of quiet he said to me, Mofokeng (my totem), I appreciate your coming and hear your concerns and your commitment to the staff members you are training, but democracy cannot wait. On that cordial note of democracy cannot wait, I deeply understood the notion that people are dispensable. While I was not in office, I was not available, I was dispensable because democracy could not wait.

This question of legacy, of keeping the ideas, has eluded the leadership of the 100-year-old movement.

Taking then into account Khaketla’s departure from the BCP in the 1960s and Mokhehle saying “people can leave, but their ideas we keep”, his parting note that “that democracy cannot wait”, I am compelled to ask myself, are the two conditions of “the ideas we shall keep” and “democracy cannot wait” the response to Msimang’s departure, or is the response “people are dispensable”? The latter seems to be the dominant narrative. The ideas we shall keep is not only a receded binary but frowned upon. Msimang’s ideas of a fight against endemic corruption are not the ideas that the party is willing to act on and keep. It is this part that Msimang observed that compelled him to consider the question not for himself but for all veterans of the movement.

The question was asked three times in Polokwane at the elective conference in December of 2007. Then-ANC president Thabo Mbeki asked: “How are we going to honour those who lost limb and life for us to enjoy the freedom today?” This question was asked in the context of the forthcoming centenary celebrations where the ANC was five years away from 2012.

This question of legacy, of keeping the ideas, has eluded the leadership of the 100-year-old movement. In the place of “ideas we shall keep” is “the riches and corruption we shall keep”. So Msimang departs with the ideas and leaves the once-glorious movement the poorer. Mokhehle kept Khaketla’s ideas, and when he finally rose, he germinated on that fundamental principle that the ideas we shall keep and democracy cannot wait. He rose to a resounding victory that astonished the world. Msimang is driven by the promise of democracy. That this ideal cannot wait. But the narrative today is one that says, the people can go and the loot we shall keep. This is the new lexicon in Mokhehle’s edition letting the people go and keeping the ideas. It is a sad day for South Africa. I worked with Ntate Mavuso as fellow director-general; I wish we had more of his like. While he goes and no-one can stop him, I have the honour of keeping his ideas and wish you could too.

Dr Pali Lehohla is the director of the Economic Modelling Academy, a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa.