In case comrades could not have an opportunity to read yesterdays article on Daily Dispatch. Here you Go!!! I saw people throwing insults on me and so on and so fourth and staff like that. Shame I had a some few engagements with the author whom I was responding and we were just laughing on some issues. Ha ha ha ha. SO he decides to call me comrade negativity. OPINION: Liberal notion of Zuma the individual is limiting By ANELE NKOYI on June 3, 2014 THE article by Mpumelelo Mkhabela “Zuma can lift legacy by fixing state enterprises” (DD, May 30) attempts to ponder the supposed role of the state in the South African economy. In his attempt to interrogate the topic, Mkhabela failed dismally to stick to and provide a detailed content for his thesis. The first limitation is that the article is too narrow – the whole discussion focuses on President Jacob Zuma as an individual, as if Zuma possesses a monopoly on wisdom over how the economy behaves. The injustice is that the argument attempts to trigger a debate on a very significant issue but I am not sure whether Mkhabela understands the importance of this debate. Furthermore, the article is underpinned by a continuous liberal notion of individualism which I find dangerous. Mkhabela starts by referring to utterances made by Zuma during his inauguration in Pretoria about the role that will be played by the state, radical economic transformation and the land reform programme that will be key in the next five years of the current administration. Mkhabela concludes that this is “rhetoric”. I want to understand one thing: what other head of administration has vocally and unapologetically pronounced on the need for radical economic transformation? I don’t remember any boldly suggesting the need for a radical economic transformation programme in South Africa. Maybe I need to be reminded of such a head of state, or maybe I am failing to understand the meaning of the word “rhetoric”, for I understand it as continuous speech making and theory without practice. If this is correct how do you then arrive at the conclusion that Zuma’s words are all rhetoric if you have not afforded the Zuma administration an opportunity to prove itself on the promises of implementing a radical economic transformation programme? If I am wrong, what barometer is Mkhabela using to arrive at the conclusion that what the president has been pronouncing on concerning a radical economic transformation programme is rhetoric? The liberal notion of individualism actually has blinded a lot of people so that they even forget that the programme of radical economic transformation is among the ANC’s resolutions made at the 53th national congress at Mangaung in 2012 (second phase of transition). This should further serve as a reminder that this programme is not something the president came up with on his own. I reiterate my argument, this liberal notion of individualism is a danger to our democratic development.In fact, Professor Steven Friedman recently underscored the point that the ANC operates as a collective when he pointed out that “more generally, the probability that this cabinet was chosen by the ANC further questions one of the more misleading themes in our politics – the tendency to overstate Zuma’s influence. South Africa is governed by a party, not an individual” (Business Day, May 28). I repeat, the issue of radical economic transformation is the mandate of the ANC, resolved at its last national congress. The third paragraph of Mkhabela’s article goes further in undermining the importance of the debate he was attempting to raise. He makes another conclusion based on his personal feelings towards the president by suggesting that “if Zuma had to be vacating office after the first five years, he would score poorly in governance”.Immediately after that, he compares the ANC’s performance in an election under former President Thabo Mbeki to that of the ANC under Zuma.Yet again, Mkhabela does this without providing any significant basis on which the conclusion of poor governance rests. In fact, he refers only to media negativity. Is that the barometer he is using to measure the performance of governance now? I see no coherent or systematic arrangement of argument in the article and it seems the author just woke up and decided to write it without making a critical analysis of Zuma’s administration. That under the Zuma administration we have seen, for the first time, the construction of two brand new universities – in the Northern Cape and Mpumalanga – is not mentioned in the article. That we have seen bold steps being taken to turn around the health situation in South Africa is not referred to. On its own, the reality that life expectancy has increased vigorously since 2009, would surely require a person to give Zuma 75% for performance in governance. I raise these examples to expose the subjective approach in which the article was written. In the middle of his article, Mkhabela poses an important question: “What would a greater intervention of the state mean in the mining sector?” He responds by suggesting that “ending the colonial slave wage could be one way”. This is moving towards what one would begin to expect from the kind of a high-level debate he proposed. In doing so he, at least, would have eliminated a lot of intellectual laziness. We are in agreement with his suggestions that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) need capable and independent administration. It is not a lie that SOEs have been struggling administratively and as a result have not been performing as expected. Now the question we must ask is whether this circumstance is an invention of President Zuma? Were SOEs stable under the administration of former democratic presidents? And was it wrong for the ANC at its 53th national congress to call for a greater role and more intervention by the state in the economy? These are the kind of questions that should have been engaged in the article. I agree with Mkhabela’s last paragraph, Zuma’s administration has the responsibility to turn around some SOEs: the SABC, SAA and the SA Post Office. In conclusion, please deal with the issues and stop concentrating on president Zuma as an individual. Doing this suggests that other former presidents were saints – and this is a mischievous stance used by opposition parties, particularly the DA during election campaigns. For example, the ANC of Jacob Zuma Ayisafani. A person holding a portfolio of influence like Mkhabela is not supposed to be falling into the same populist trap because that would suggest to us that he is affiliated with a particular political agenda. My last word of advice to many of us as South Africans is to start playing the ball, not the man. Anita Zenande Rojiele Nkoyi is the former SRC premier at Walter Sisulu University’s Buffalo City campus and is now an ANC and ANCYL activist at Dr W Rubusana branch (ward 3) Buffalo City Metro
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 07:23:52 +0000
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