ANCYL: Zuma’s uthini baba moment - by Tinyiko Maluleka

*A must read! by Tinyiko Maluleka...very engaging and interesting angle*

Jacob Zuma was made to wait for three hours because the start of the ANCYL’s elective conference (Midrand, June 16 2011) was delayed by, among others, the late arrival of ANCYL president Julius Malema. Once the conference began, Zuma had to listen to Malema‘s wide-ranging, 90-minute speech — a speech that was not all that flattering of Zuma or the ANC. When Zuma eventually got to say his say, there was such disrespectful heckling, especially from a front row of seats where a section of the ANCYL leadership was seated. Apparently, such was the brazenness of the heckling that at one point in his speech, Zuma had to pause and confront one particularly indecent heckler directly. “U thini baba? U khuluma nami?” Excuse me sir? Are you talking to me?

Zuma’s u thini baba moment was an astonishing moment. It occurred in the middle of one of Zuma’s most important speeches of the year. The speech was important enough for Zuma to wait for three hours in order to deliver it. It was important enough for Zuma to keep a crowd of 55 000 South Africans at Orlando Stadium waiting for three hours — not to mention the millions who waited to see and hear him speak on television. Some commentators and observers have slated Zuma for standing the nation up in order to buy ANCYL support for his second term. Others took the Malema bait about the ANCYL being “the protector of Zuma”. All indications are that there was no love lost between Zuma and Malema. Not then and not now. Not even when Zuma touted Malema as a possible future president. They simply recognised how much they needed one another — each for his own political survival.

Ever since Malema burst onto the political scene in 2008, Zuma and Malema have been playing off each other like striker and midfielder. Such has been the intensity of their mutual need for one another it has been necessary for each to routinely check his potential for independence from the other. In 2008 and much of 2009 Malema’s midfielder role included deflecting attention away from Zuma so Zuma “could score the goals”. Of course Malema was but one of a dozen of Zuma “midfielders” — Mbalula, Vavi, Mantashe, Phosa, Nzimande etc. From late 2009 onwards Malema started showing signs of boredom with the midfielder role. Soon he was scoring own goals and real goals, politically and financially.

The u thini baba moment occurs smack on the day and occasion where Malema was officially declaring his graduation from both the midfield role and the striker’s role into the captain’s role. Where Zuma’s June 16 speech was framed in didactic and clarification mode, Malema’s June 16 speech was clearly framed as an agenda-setting speech. Malema’s lieutenants sensed that their leader had the upper hand and in their enthusiasm, to savour the moment, they catapulted Zuma into the u thini baba moment.

Was this the moment in which Zuma came to realise that his partnership with Malema had served its term and outlived its purpose? I want to suggest that the most significant thing at the ANCYL conference was not the waiting Zuma had to endure; it was not when Malema declared his loyalty to Zuma; it was not the shameful jilting of the crowd-in-waiting at Orlando Stadium; the most significant thing was rather the u thini baba moment. Like a spurned lover who knows deep down that the game is up but waits and pleads desperately for denial or unequivocal confirmation, the u-thini-baba moment was the moment Zuma both needed and dreaded.

When the moment came, the least Zuma could do was acknowledge it. So he pressed the pause button on his speech, forcing a moment of complete silence in the hall. Typically, he pushed his reading glasses up his nose bridge, bit his lower lip and wiping all traces of the smile that sometimes seems to sit permanently on his face, he turned around, looked the heckler in the eye and asked two terse questions: U thini baba? U khuluma nami? Say that again! Are you talking to me? The questions were rhetorical and the heckler new that instantly. No response was necessary. These were no questions, really. It was a growl accepting the challenge to war and verbalising a broken relationship and publicly acknowledging a deep sense of mutual disdain.

It was a moment of revelation for the youth league as well. It was a moment that unmasked the webs of deceit and flattery that had characterised Malema’s earlier pledge to Zuma that he was seated among his staunchest and most loyal supporters — his “protectors”. The u thini baba moment was therefore a moment of truth for both parties. Before that moment things were tricky and difficult for Zuma — much like looking for one’s lost or misplaced contact eye lenses in a dark room. After that moment things became clearer but no less difficult.

We now live in the post-u thini baba era. This is the era in which we have seen the installation of Mac Maharaj and Amos Masondo in Zuma’s presidential offices — the Union Buildings and Luthuli House. But alas! Seduced by the almost total victory at the ANCYL elections and buoyed by the animated responses to the nationalisation proposal, Malema and his supporters appear to have either missed or misread the significance of the u thini baba moment. From time to time they slip into pre-u thini baba mode. They seem to think that they are still covered with Zuma’s boundless blanket of goodwill and goodness. Malema and his friends do not seem to realise that Zuma has withdrawn the political overdraft he had given them.

In the process Malema and the league have proceeded to usurp foreign policy and economic policy leadership from both the government and the ruling party. This is how Malema has proceeded to install the nationalisation of mines debate at the centre of national discourse. And this is how he has issued some of the sharpest and most embarrassing criticisms of South African foreign policy positions — on Libya, on Ivory Coast and more recently and most brazenly on Botswana. Nor has Malema stopped doing what he does better than everyone else — manufacturing a thousand red herrings and plausible plastic issues to rationalise and justify his actions and utterances. One such red herring is the threat of disciplinary action against Malema, an attempt to reduce or remove his influence on the ANC succession debate.

Meanwhile the South African media have been hard at work — over the past month — trying to expose what they see as the unseemly side to Malema’s wealth. AfriForum has laid criminal charges. The Public Protector has indicated she will investigate certain aspects of the allegations. The ANC has a meeting with Malema and Co today. Will the ANC have the courage to act decisively? Will Zuma have the courage to act in a post-u thini baba manner or will he revert to a pre-u thini baba mode of action? All will soon be revealed

Degrees of separation

There is a major misconception in our modern society. Our post apartheid, rainbow nation, “we all have rights,” khumbaya, hand-holding society. The misconception…the assumption is that turning a privilege into a right makes it easier to attain; that the word “right” will cause a ripple of transformation which will, eventually, reach everyone. Here’s the problem with this assumption; it’s a load of rubbish. An example of this load of rubbish is the relationship between basic education and its distant cousin (twice removed); Higher Education. Allow me to elaborate:

When a child is sent to Pre-Primary School, it is generally assumed that from there they will advance to Primary school. Parents give one another advice as to which schools have the best teachers and conversations are had about application forms and similar processes. The child reaches the seventh grade and the same conversations are had about which high school is best and concerns over transportation and fees etc. When the child reaches the eleventh and twelfth grade, the conversation comes up again, which University or Technical college (or whatever else they are calling them nowadays) is best. Their fees are debated and reputations scrutinised and large volumes of information are shared. Now, these conversations stretch from rural Eastern Cape to Sandton, however whether all three of these conversations are had depends heavily on class and/or privilege. So…the access to the so-called right; depends on ones class and/or privilege. The margins seem clear; supposedly, everyone can ride the basic education bus…Higher Education, however, is a two seated sports car; no one is saying you can never ride it, you are just going to have to pay…and the currency is either Rands or human tears depending on your circumstances.

We have a knack for holding up “token rural pupils”. “Look at Themba, he lives in a mud hut and has never slept in a bed. His mother is a drunk and his classroom has no roof but he managed to get six distinctions in matric and go on to get more distinctions in University. He hasn’t a worry in the world because we are picking up the tab” what we don’t realise is that we are making Higher Education seem even more farfetched for any ‘C grade aggregate’ student who goes to the same school. By no stretch of their imagination are they going to get six distinctions and unfortunately that may be their only shot. Now there are those chosen few who decide that they will apply and attempt to get study loans once they are in University, but no one prepares them for the hostility that they will be faced with. They are not told that they will be expected to submit assignments electronically regardless of them having never used a computer let alone email. They are not warned that privileged people tend to stop listening when they hear a heavy rural accent. They are not informed that though they may have been accepted into the University; they will only be tolerated by the people in it. So, once again class and/or privilege (or lack thereof) stands between an individual and their rights. Even Themba and all of his distinctions and his zero balance on his fees account will struggle; and eventually have to choose: Is he Themba, the boy from a small village in Peddie, or is he a scholar at the University of Snooty. The two worlds are very far apart making them difficult to straddle, and usually the only method of survival is to succumb to grooming.

Our society is always too happy to throw people onto the lazy pile. Could someone please explain to me where ubuntu went? Whatever happened to empathy? When did it become so difficult for people to attempt to understand the circumstances of others? How is it that when a child goes into University and experiences a genuine culture shock, they become the responsibility of the Christians or the Hippies and everyone else is willing to stand back and watch them drown. Young men and women are leaving universities with debt and no degrees. Coming out worse off than when they went in. We, as a society, would like to attribute it all to laziness and lack of will…however, our unwillingness to acknowledge that there are other factors reveals that we are in fact the ones who are lazy and lack will. Perhaps I am being rash, perhaps my rants are propelled by mountains of debt made by student loans and I am just a sorry, nagging, bitter, stick in the mud who owes the government money….OR maybe, just maybe, there is some work to be done when it comes to the elitist nature of Higher Education.

Attaching privilege to any form of education perpetuates poverty. Children in rural areas throw blankets on mirrors and sit flat on the ground when the heavens darken for fear of being struck by lightning, those same children go to school every day but a University degree may never even cross their minds. What are the odds really?