Former Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu during an interview with The Star Editor Sifiso Mahlangu. Picture: Itumeleng English/African News Agency (ANA)
By Sello Theletsane
If you are a leader who can’t be mature enough to separate governance from personal issues, control your emotions, and manage differences, especially policy-related differences, you are bound to be exposed for your real agenda or leadership weaknesses. With such weak traits, it will always find it a tall order to unite a massive and complex organisation like the ANC.
History tells us that Lindiwe Sisulu is an embedded senior leader of the ANC. She is deeply entrenched in the liberation struggle of this country. Her family alone collectively spent 56 years on Robben Island. This is between three generations. Outside Robben Island, her mother Albertina was placed under house arrest, circumscribed by banning orders, and, from time to time, jailed in solitary confinement by the apartheid regime. She (Lindiwe) and her brothers Max, Mlungisi, and Zwelakhe spent 13 years in jail outside of Robben Island. Like other families, it is clear to trace the commitment of this family to the liberation struggle. Simple mathematics will tell you that if you add 13 to 56, that gives you 69 years combined in prison.
These are the years they have lost on their lives, without committing any crime. Factually, you can go around the world and see if you will get anything closer to this kind of commitment to the struggle for liberation from the inter-generations of one family. This is what compelled Jimmy Carter, the former United States President, to seek an urgent meeting between himself and Walter Sisulu, who was not an ANC president. Lindiwe Sisulu was equally tortured, beaten, and severely dealt with by the apartheid regime, whose remnants seem to be still in control in this country through puppets such as Ramaphosa. What kind of ANC leader will be controlled by white monopoly capital to the extent that he will fire from his Cabinet an ANC struggle veteran and replace her with an insignificant member of the opposition (Patricia de Lille)?
What kind of message is he sending? This is by no means to say Sisulu is perfect, but she is a necessary and active epitome and embodiment of our political struggle history today and a thorn in the flesh of the white corporate racist class. This should not in any manner be misconstrued as Sisulu having an arrogant sense of entitlement. She fully understands that in the various portfolios she has served for decades, she did so at the pleasure of the president of the country, including Ramaphosa. She also fully understands that no ANC member is indispensable or bigger than the ANC.
However, her impeccable track record in government speaks for itself. She, among others, built more than four million houses during her stint in Human Settlements. This is a record acknowledged even by the United Nations. She dealt with corruption in all her government portfolios. She initiated a bill that prohibits state officials from doing business with the government during her tenure as Public Service and Administration Minister. While serving as International Relations Minister, she implemented the ANC conference resolution on Israel effectively. When she instituted a forensic investigation in the Water Department, she was removed by Ramaphosa, allegedly to protect his allies who were implicated in massive corruption. Ironically, these were the actions of someone who got into Presidency on a ticket of anti-corruption.
Anti-corruption in the ANC is a resolution and a policy matter. Therefore, there was no way Ramaphosa would expect a minister of the ANC who was a shining corruption buster in his administration to keep quiet on Phala Phala, especially if such a transgression is contrary to ANC policies and resolutions. You can’t hide a policy matter or a resolution. If Ramaphosa was serious about fighting corruption, he should have given the Ministry of Police to a decisive individual and someone beyond reproach like Sisulu, but he couldn't take this risk because Sisulu might have arrested him first for all his crimes: Marikana, Phala Phala, and even those crimes from which he is shielded by the judiciary (the sealing of CR17 files).
At the same time, state capture implicated ANC members are rewarded with cabinet positions, while non-performing cabinet fellows and other corrupt ministers are protected by the same president. Then, for factional reasons and under pressure from his white masters, he targets Sisulu simply because she mustered the courage to speak out against his corruption. He then replaces her with an opposition leader.
History also tells us that it was Walter Sisulu who recruited Cyril Ramaphosa to the ANC. History also tells us that it was Ramaphosa who ensured that Thabo Mbeki was removed from office. It is the same history that tells us that it was under Ramaphosa's watch that former president Jacob Zuma was unjustly jailed. It was also under his watch that Chris Hani's killer, Janus Walus, was released from prison. Ramaphosa, for self-serving motives, removed Ace Magashule from the ANC. It is now proving that Magashule doesn’t have a case to answer. We are also told that Ramaphosa is coming for Paul Mashatile, the one he didn’t want as his deputy in government.
All these individuals that Ramaphosa is busy destroying are embedded leaders in the liberation struggle. The question is: What is Ramaphosa's end game? Signs are all around that those who are strong on the ideals and resolutions of the ANC are a problem to his agenda of killing the ANC, the likes of Sisulu, who is more ideologically steeped than him.
Nobody knows what Ramaphosa stands for except his self-hatred, as evidenced by his determination to keep black masses indefinitely trapped in grinding poverty, his ruthless pursuit of self-enrichment, and the facilitation of the new state capture by his handlers. On the other hand, Sisulu’s loyalty to the ANC can be tested in different eras in the history of the ANC. The formation of Mbhazima Shilowa and Terror Lekota's Congress of the People (Cope) is one example. While this organisation attracted many prominent ANC leaders, including those who today want to be portrayed as never having had any links with this breakaway movement destined for extinction, the thought of leaving the ANC has never crossed Sisulu’s mind.
It would seem only those who are fit to serve in Ramaphosa's Cabinet are those individuals willing to sell their souls by shielding Marikana, load shedding, the ANC's loss of support as evidenced by its huge losses in the previous local government elections, and Phala Phala.
One thing is certain: history will absolve Sisulu. She will forever be recognised as the courageous woman who stood up alone and spoke against the capture of the ANC by white monopoly capital. On the other hand, Ramaphosa and his fellow captured ANC cronies will go down in history as blacks and house negroes who killed a legendary liberation movement and brought back white power.
*Sello Theletsane is a senior journalist at Africa News Global. He writes in his personal capacity
The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media