There is one man I deeply respect in South African politics, Songezo Zibi, leader of Rise Mzansi and the current Chairperson of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
When Zibi identified a gap in the political arena, he didn’t linger on the sidelines, masquerading as a commentator or public intellectual.
Zibi rallied his supporters and made himself available for public office, entering the fray with integrity, not posturing.
By contrast, Professor Gumede hides behind the veneer of academia and commentary.
Professor Gumede’s piece on the “ANC [African National Congress] failures that allegedly tarnish its GNU [Government of National Unity] partner,” not partners, is proof in the pudding.
It is riddled with non-sequiturs and thinly veiled efforts to shield non-ANC members of the GNU from perceived reputational damage.
His central argument is that GNU partner(s) will be “tarnished by association” with the ANC’s so-called “failed policies” and what he describes as the party’s “self-destruct mode… populist, ideological or captured policies”.
Yet, curiously, not a single failed policy is identified, aside from a mention of the Value-Added Tax (VAT) increase, which, by no stretch of the imagination, qualifies as a failed policy.
Which ANC policies, in his view, are populist?
If they both failed and were captured, who captured them, and to what end?
Professor Gumede never ventures into these critical details.
It can’t be both “failed” and “captured ” without clarity.
Which is it?
Who is supposedly hijacking ANC policymaking to such an extent that the party is hurtling towards “self-destruct mode”?
The metaphor begins to unravel.
Professor Gumede portrays the ANC as if it were a virulent strain of Covid-19, a virus not content with merely weakening the host but intent on complete annihilation.
The imagery is vivid yet patently absurd.
As a history and political science student, I understand that political decay typically results from flawed strategies or external pressures, such as the rise of the uMkhonto weSizwe party, rather than from deliberate self-sabotage.
No party seeks state power merely to destroy itself.
Yes, I have criticised the ANC for a long time (see my Muck Rack profile), but I have been specific: I hold the party accountable for promises made and not kept.
I’ve studied President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Addresses since 2018.
I even wrote a three-part series for the Daily Maverick as my humble attempt to participate in public discourse. I didn’t resort to strong, vile words like “nonsensical”.
That sort of language suggests a lack of academic rigour and perhaps a touch of anxiety to catapult non-GNU members into government, not through coalition, but by concurrence, bypassing real political negotiation.
It is unclear why Gumede seeks to be the spokesperson for the non-ANC GNU members.
Does he wish he had entered the dungeon of party politics and discarded the underpaying and demanding role of being a commentator and academic?
I have always preferred slogans to intellectual sparring; nobody can accuse me of intellectual flatulence.
Here’s my wager: Professor Gumede is peeved.
Not because the ANC has suddenly become unrecognisable; he has long held that view, but because his cherished Moonshot Pact disintegrated faster than a sandcastle in a storm. The same actors he once presented as principled alternatives – the Democratic Alliance (DA), ActionSA, and others – have since joined hands with the ANC in the GNU.
Not out of loyalty or ideological alignment, but out of political expedience.
That’s how multiparty democracy works in the real world.
His dismay seems to stem less from policy and more from political positioning.
Gumede’s call for non-ANC GNU partner(s) to challenge policies in court, rather than in Parliament, where they have an electoral mandate, reflects a curious lack of faith in democratic contestation. Coalitions require compromise, not courtroom battles.
Breaking news, Gumede: GNU partners, except the DA, are satisfied. Their involvement in ideological gymnastics is part of the body politic.
They entered this coalition with their eyes wide open. They are under no obligation to remain.
I doubt they require a Wits University professor to speak on their behalf.
South Africans deserve more than rhetorical broadsides masquerading as governance analysis.
They deserve honesty about the complexities of coalition-building and the maturity to recognise that the political arena is rarely straightforward, often messy, and always influenced by political trade-offs. Gumede chooses ideological purism; I choose realism.
But the most laughable assertion, coming from a professor no less, is the idea that South African foreign policy is outdated. Is calling out Israel for genocide outdated?
Is it outdated to challenge Uncle Sam, the latest political leader to mollycoddle Russian President Vladimir Putin?
Wasn’t it Trump who humiliated the Ukrainian leader in front of the world’s press, demanding minerals and suggesting Ukraine should cede part of its territory to Russia?
Is this the modern way of conducting diplomacy and managing the complexities of geopolitics, Professor Gumede?
Let’s “update” our foreign policy then: reinstate our embassy in Israel, recall our ambassadors from Iran (evil people), America (remember the arrest of Nelson Mandela was made possible by the CIA), Russia (invaded a sovereign state), and Britain (remember colonialism and our arts and gold stolen).
Is that what you propose? Should we decouple from the cause of the Palestinian people and adopt Trumpism to save our bacon?
As people of the same age group, even though Songezo is younger than I am, I believe we still have much to learn from him.
If you feel aggrieved by the captured, failed, self-destructive policies that are supposedly dragging South Africa down, then enter the political arena (where, yes, the standards are lower) and stop pretending to be a commentator when you’re clearly a mouthpiece for the DA.
*Bhekisisa Mncube is an author and columnist who won the national 2024 Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Award for columns and editorials, as well as the same category at the regional 2020 Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards. He writes a regular column for the Daily Maverick. The views expressed by Bhekisisa Mncube are not necessarily those of The Bulrushes
