As many went out to cast their votes across the vast expanse of our beautiful land, a debt of gratitude is owed to those who decided to raise their hands and who, genuinely, want to serve.
We usually lump politicians into one basket, label them the “scum” of the earth for the many challenges spawned by their involvement in public life. If you add to the fact that we view with suspicion all those who want access to the nation’s till, we often don’t question if the baby must be thrown out with the bath water.
But, before pronouncements are made of the outcome, we must pause and consider some truths.
Not all who want to become “representatives of the people” are bad people. Not all of them are corrupt, incompetent or bigoted racists.
Though hard to believe, some, if not many, are motivated by a strong desire to do good in society, to be the embodiment of positive change, to be the voice of the voiceless. Few, I concede, do live up to this mission.
If the ANC is messing up or the DA is racist, what then ought to happen? Whose child must raise their hands to fill the void?
It is easy to complain or throw your hands in the air in disillusionment and, like Biblical Psalmists, “lift up my eyes to the mountains” and wonder where our rescue will come from!
It’s also easy to be a hero on social media, using quasi-anonymous handles to insult people yet offering no solutions. Haughty indignation too won’t help solve the many societal challenges we face.
“Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways,” Karl Marx once observed, “the point, however, is to change it.”
And therein lies the rub. Out of the 60-million of us, there’s a limited number of people who believed they should stop complaining and raise their hands to serve, to lead, to think of solutions to our country’s myriad challenges, to offer themselves to be quizzed by a distrustful media and social media detectives.
While philosophers, journalists and scholars serve a limited role in helping to frame the meaning of things, understanding is not, in itself, an end.
If the ANC is messing up or the DA is racist, what then ought to happen? Whose child must raise their hands to fill the void? Socrates framed this challenge thus: “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
And how else, our public representative wannabes must have thought, do you move your country forward in our very imperfect politics without “building the new” or, for the ANC, attempting to renew the party? For, indeed, it is close to pointless just interpreting without much action.
The ANC, in a normal election, gets about 11-million people to vote for it. That’s when the party of Oliver Tambo is at its best. Its challengers will need balls of steel to conceptualise a strategy, find ways to fund it, mobilise sufficient numbers of people who will not only believe in the message but become its dependable disciples on the ground throughout the country. Julius Malema will call them the EFF ‘ground forces’. In the ANC, they will say “maqabane ka Tambo (Oliver Tambo’s volunteers/activists).”
Yet many are undeterred. The proliferation of parties in our country must tell us there are people who are motivated to do the right things, who want to serve, still. They, in the words of former US president Theodore Roosevelt, want to be in the arena.
Roosevelt’s inspiring speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, was intermittently used to summon courage and inspire people who take action rather than become couch experts.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds...(whose) place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
This is an ode to our imperfect politicians. As we await the outcome of the elections, we must honour those among them who believe in servant leadership.
“Man is a political being,” noted Aristotle. And so, as we vote, may we pause to appreciate those who moved beyond criticising and, as political beings, are seeking, as per Marx’s injunction, to contribute solutions through action.
Here’s to the doers of our time. The believers. The action-orientated creators of change. We go out to vote for you because we, the people, believe you are well meaning. We believe you know our brutal and ugly history and will do everything in your power to ensure social justice.
But our men and women in the arena must know that once they take office, we will scrutinise and critique them like we did not vote for them. At that point, what will matter is what is good for our country, not any political party, as Dikgang Moseneke once said.
When all is said and done, may South Africa be the winner.
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