LEADERS ARE NOT BORN BUT PRODUCED By: Kaizer Mohau
As we are nearing 2011 in which we will have our local government elections one is tempted to start a political debate on one important aspect – that is the kind of leaders we should have to lead our local governments. For sometimes now many municipalities have experienced and went through many community protests mainly for service delivery. While we could in any normal case condemn violent protests in which lives we lost, public property destroyed, private properties damaged – it is not acceptable that we should think that communities we wrong to protest and demand what belongs to them in terms of basic services like housing, water, electricity, and many other services. These protests, needs to be properly looked at so that we are able to avoid them and part of avoiding them we should intensively analyse those we places in positions of power. It really bits me as to why is it the case that leaders are looked at in terms of their so-called personal education and not commitment to the people they are meant to serve? Former teachers and Priests are mainly the ones we place in positions and at the same time we have failed dismally to close gap for corruption in May municipalities. I do not understand why we always want to think that educated people will never be corrupt – in my view, the very education they got is the real cause for corruption. If for instances someone was a teacher or school principal during apartheid and never opposed the system, what makes them people’s ‘leaders? Some of this individuals where wholeheartedly opposed to the struggle for our liberation they were actually police spies, spying on young people who happened to be part of the students organisations which were opposed to apartheid. Perhaps before we places people in positions we should firstly do a research on who are they and what they did since their childhood – so that we are able to since their childhood they grew up wishing for a better society not how educated they are. COMPETENCY v/s Commitment Many in the media and some Mickey Mouse opposition parties have made silence noise about competency, accusing in the same breath the leading African National Congress of appointing people without proper qualifications – as to what they meant, I certainly do not know. But what I really know is that they forgets or ignore the importance of commitment to the nation we should serve. One wonders as to what qualifications did the Botha regime for instance had – and if they were the most educated then I hate education because it produced racists and murderers, in the form of the minority white regime. In the Western Cape provincial government which is led by Madam Helen “Hittlerist” Zille, to competent is if you are white male – which brings another question as to only white males are competent and does Oumissies think our government will do the same? Besides, for me leaders are not produced by universities only, though universities and education in general are very important and necessary, they cannot be the only criteria used to identify and appoint leaders. In many municipalities, Municipal Managers were and continue to be the most corrupt people, despite their masters’ degree etc, at the same time Mayors are not innocent either. That is why one of the problems we raised during this period – has been why do we only suspend or fire Municipal Managers – when we discover corruption in municipalities, we should equally find out why political appointees like Mayors failed to see this corruption. I do not subscribe to the view that they are not accounting officers, they are there to provide political oversight and therefore any corrupt Municipal Manager or municipal official becomes corrupt in association with the Mayor or the Mayor does not know his duty of making sure we do not have a situation were corruption is not detected until millions of public is missing. How should Mayors monitor and direct Municipal Managers and municipal officials?, who actually is responsible to police Municipal Officials? So for me once it is empirically proved that a municipal official has been involved in corruption then he must go down not alone but with those who were supposed to detect his or her corrupt activities. The fact that Mayors appoint in the main Municipal Managers, it makes Municipal Managers to be prisoners and rely in favour of Mayors and their political handlers in the form of political factions if the exist. In The final analysis, competency should not be the only requirement we need to appoint but it must be accompanied by political commitment to the people of our country as outline by the African National Congress in the strategy and tactics document as adopted by the ANC’s 52nd National Conference. It is very useless to go into a war situation surrounded by people who do not believe in what you believe in – no commander will choose soldiers who do not believe in him or her, lest there be a mutiny at a very critical moment of the war. POLITILITICS AND POWER Naturally speaking, politics and power are not separate issues, politics are about power not just existence. To be a political party is about having power as to what you do with it? Depends on you. That is why in politics there are always debates based on differences – this differences are about how you power that have. For us in the ANC led democratic movement, political power means ensuring that we improve for the better the lives of millions of South Africans – not just certain racial groups or cliques. The previously, 1996 class project led government there was an intention of depoliticisation of power in government, something that could have actually turned our government into a government of the so-called educated money-happy intellectuals – whose main aim was to make money and get rich at the expense of the National Democratic Revolution and its aims and objectives of Non racialism, Non sexism and democratic society. As the ANC led movement we strive to ensure that we use political power to advance our struggle in resolving three fundamental contradictions in our society, which are, the racial, gender and class contradictions – it is in this context that we believe without achieving this, we will never give away the power we have not a cult but as a political party. But equally important in relation to local government elections it is the fact that we need not to give too much power to individuals like Mayors as this has historically shown that it does not help or advance good governance, as understood by loyal ANC cadres. In ever conference of the ANC, there are discussion documents, amongst those there is a document designed to define a cadre of the ANC. And through that, ours are not just members but are leaders who are produced by our revolution and committed to the ANC and our people, Africans in particular and Blacks in general. So your competence should be guided by the above criteria and its bonus should then be how educated you are. So politics should never be isolated from power. Political factionalism and ‘media preneurs’ As we are all aware that one of the main challenges facing our movement since after the strategic defeat of the 1996 class project has been factionalism which has become the project’s dead ghost – ironically continuing in its attempt to destroy our movement. This tactical political enemy of the movement continues to ensure that those who disagreed with the project during its era are dealt in many ways to ensure that the current leadership of the ANC is seen in a negative and failing light. As victims of factionalism some of us have been subjected into a feeling of being useless in government and yet continue to be paid for just coming to the office and doing literally nothing. Perhaps to avoid this factional dominance in local government, we need to ensure that those we appoint are loyal to individuals but to the movement as a whole – so that to avoid a situation where in which when the individual we are loyal to is being disciplined we then choose to defend them at the expense of the ANC and its strategic objectives. As we said during the period in which the current President was the target number one of the class project, that we do not support Cde Jacob Zuma as a person but as a cadre of the movement to whom we are convinced that the ANC will be properly led, and this has been proved and continue to be proved correct. The current local government leaders especially in the North West province have been used by the disbanded Supra’s cult, thus we posed a question after the disbandment, as to why do we retain Mayors and Councillors who were part of the faction which was led by Supra and his cohorts. Meetings of the faction were held in municipal buildings in which strategies were developed to undermine the current leadership – certainly we do not need that comes 2011 and post. The media in our many municipalities was used to advance factional agendas as opposed to ANC policies – for instance local and community media including or mainly radios were used to report wrongly about individuals and in favour of others so to create a clearly factionalist hatred of those who did not dance to factional music. So the media in South Africa has become more involved in politics not just to report accurately but simply to help factions. Thus I agree without any hesitation with Comrade Blade Nzimande, General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP) – In the Volume 09, of Umsebenzi Online No.13 of July 07 2010, when he says: “It might as well be that ‘mediapreneurs’ like Ashley Smith a former Argus journalist, are probably the tip of the iceberg in our South African media”, in taking this further I will argue that indeed the Ashley Smith confession is just a drop in the ocean, there is more to this than that particular story. Municipalities paid thousands to certain radio stations not for honest and sincere coverage but for a factionalist agenda. Considering the fact that we are now moving to 2011 they are using that media to start lobbying evil-fully so for them to be retained as Mayors and Councillors – but we know that they are not honest or sincere and we should make sure that we do not retain them but we replace them with those who have zero tolerance to corruption and factionalism. In our view finally, LEADERS ARE NOT BORN TO LEAD BUT ARE PRODUCED BY THE REVOLUTION. By: Kaizer Mohau Spokesperson in the Office of the Executive Mayor Tlokwe City Council Potchefstroom 072 7315 818 (But he is writing in his personal capacity) -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
