Albertina Sisulu never betrayed the ANC and cannot be celebrated by those who betrayed her values

By: Clyde Ramalaine*

A necessary celebration for ANC and UDF stalwart by all standards, who would have turned 103, had she been with us. In philosophy, there is an expression referred to as ‘sub specie boni’, which means under the appearance of good if translated from Latin into English.

Last week, a section of ANC Gauteng Women’s League members in which the questionable and a dodgy former spokesperson of Cyril Ramaphosa, Khuselo Diko allegedly played a significant role, invited Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka to deliver a lecture on the venerated Mama Albertina Sisulu.

At first glance, the non-observant eye will see nothing wrong since Mlambo-Ngcuka comes decorated in credentials of a recent senior UN position, coupled with her brief stint as deputy president of South Africa in 2005 when then SA and ANC president Thabo Mbeki in political suicide thought it his inalienable right to get rid of his deputy Jacob Zuma.

Mlambo-Ngcuka, for some, therefore, has every right to speak at an occasion of the celebration of Albertina Sisulu. It is assumed there can be nothing evil to have her speak.

I am reminded again of the adage: under the appearance of good. Mlambo–Ngcuka’s return to South Africa depicts a neatly crafted public relations exercise that attempts to portray her as ready to serve SA.

At another level, her presence in the SA’s political discourse appears orchestrated to parachute her into contention of significance to stopgap the woman presidential leadership conundrum of hitherto patriarchal ANC politics.

Let us also be crystal- clear, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has every right to be ambitious to lead South Africa, which is not remotely my bone of contention with her presence. My challenge is that Mlambo-Ngcuka does not depict Albertina Sisulu’s values if we adjudicate her historical political choices and her known self-interest.

She does not embody the same resilience of convictions but is arguably the opposite of what Albertina Sisulu resembles in the totality of the latter’s humanity.

Based on that, a case has to be made why Mlambo–Ngcuka is perhaps not the right person to address any audience on Albertina Sisulu in any authentic sense. Furthermore, the brazen nakedness of a CR22 political agenda needs to be laid bare that, in self-interest, attempts to use Albertina Sisulu as a means to an end.

Also read: Cyril’s scheme to defy, play and divide the ANCWL in using Modise as a means to stop Sisulu’s return-to-ANC-values-candidacy

I have said before that if “Nelson and Winnie Mandela represented the face of the ANC, Walter and Albertina Sisulu embodied the heart of our liberation struggle”.

Recognised values of selflessness, servant-attitude, maximum loyalty to the ANC, making others count was synonymous in the association of life and thus came naturally for Walter and Albertina.

It’s from that absolute bedrock of uncompromising values that they produced the likes of Nelson Mandela even Thabo Mbeki, who lived with the Sisulu’s for a while.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, regardless of all her credentials, unfortunately, does not resemble the intrinsic values of the principled ANC cadreship for which Albertina Sisulu distinguished herself throughout her life.

Albertina Sisulu never abandoned the ANC to join another breakaway party because her preferred candidate seeking a third term at the helm of the ANC was trounced.

Mlambo-Ngcuka was not just willing to betray the ANC, she was actively involved in that difficult period of ANC history which led to the birth of the Terror Lekota-led Congress of the People(COPE).

She ultimately left the ANC to join COPE. Rumour has it that Mbeki, who is still Mlambo-Ngcuka’s handler, out of bitterness and anger, played a prominent role in the formation of COPE after he was recalled by the ANC, months before he completed his second term as the country’s president.

Instead of standing for principles and values, Mlambo-Ngcuka replaced that with the worship of Mbeki whom Adekeye Adebajo identified as the “philosopher-king”.

Mlambo–Ngcuka, with this choice and action, appeared to place an ANC member, Mbeki, above the ANC and could not handle that Mbeki lost his third term presidential attempt at Polokwane in 2007 to one that her crowd declared as a “Zulu boy” and a peasant.

Mbeki is shamelessly using her again to achieve what he embarrassingly failed to attain in Polokwane in 2007 – for Mlambo-Ngcuka to be the ANC’s second-in-command and ultimately the country’s
Albertina Sisulu never plotted with a group that worshipped any disgruntled individual to split the ANC.

Mlambo- Ngcuka will be remembered as one of those who did not put the unity of the movement as paramount in non-negotiability but was adamant about creating a tool to topple the ANC.

We all know that the birth of factionalism came with this 2007 Polokwane loss by Mbeki and his supporters. The faction became a COPE party.

Albertina was never a factionalist and did not serve a factionalist agenda. We all know that the birth of factionalism in the ANC came with this Polokwane loss Mbeki and his supporters suffered. The faction became a COPE party, the same party Phumzile is a member of.

Albertina Sisulu never had to explain her membership or resorted to sophistry as to her ANC membership.

According to Terror Lekota, leader of COPE, Mlambo Ngcuka is still a COPE member in good standing and, therefore, not an ANC member.

Albertina Sisulu never was directed by self-interest and captured by external capital interest, as is currently the case of the existing president of the ANC.

Also read: Will the Women’s League in 2022 again allow patriarchy to abuse them to divide itself and deliver a 14th male ANC presidency?

Albertina Sisulu never allowed personal ambition to drive her commitment to the liberation cause. Whether Mlambo-Ngcuka may protest, her choice to be part of the breakaway COPE details self-interest as central.

Albertina Sisulu never betrayed the values of the ANC or her comrades. Her commitment to the liberation cause and her movement remains pristine and unparalleled.

Albertina Sisulu was among her people who she walked with in the dust and identified in the agony of their colonial and apartheid evil heresy of inflicted pain.

She did not pursue any high office in the typical careerist sense while absent among the people.

Albertina Sisulu dared to risk everything and stayed faithful to the cause. What did Mlambo-Ngcuka risk?

Albertina Sisulu would have asked why an ANC president needed R1bn to become ANC president. Mlambo-Ngcuka lacks the moral rectitude, and courage of conviction to challenge Ramaphosa on his hitherto non-transparency as to who funded his CR17 campaign. Is she not part of that same crowd since she now sings about how Ramaphosa is doing good when she is bold to tell even those who do not care, how bad Zuma’s 9 years were.

Albertina Sisulu would have asked what happened to the PPE billions that went missing under Ramaphosa’s leadership for which he instituted five forms of cross-layered investigations necessarily obfuscating the actual outcomes.

The intention was always to have a tiny percentage of the looted money be traced to insignificant contractors when the real criminals bagged billions. There is simply no snow ball’s chance in hell that Mlambo-Ngcuka may ever in principle conviction dare to ask Ramaphosa to account on the loot as his legacy. She cannot do so because it will be detrimental for her ambitions for SA high office, hence her singing for her supper onto a CR22 slate.

Through this brazen act, the dastard and depraved minds of CR22 factional political self-interest would attempt to weaponise the stalwart for its own second-termism agendas.

Albertina Sisulu’s commitment to complete liberation better understood in both political and economic struggle burdens the ANC at all levels to be much more circumspect in its choices as to whom it calls upon to speak in celebration of her legacy.

Meaning what Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka stands for is diametrically opposite to what Albertina Sisulu ever stood for.

Under the appearance of good, in which CR22 self-interest defined the ‘celebration’ of Albertina Sisulu, the organisers really set out to defy every principle and value Albertina Sisulu stood for.

The choice for Mlambo-Ngcuka is not necessarily organic but rather more a desperate tactical move on the part of the lusty CR22 crowd.

The CR22 faction, clearly intimidated and unnerved by the growing candidacy of Lindiwe Sisulu, has a deliberate aim to stop the inevitable. They would resort to any means possible. Instead of an open contest, which is always welcomed, the CR22 attests to a paranoid group. So paranoid that it in this season resorts to take refuge in COPE members and leaders to come and aid their fight for survival into a second term.

Ramaphosa is confronted with hostile crowds at every turn, hence him travelling with a busload of hired mobs to ensure he is protected from the people’s rightful hostility.

Juxtapose the scores of videos and clips of how warmly Lindiwe Sisulu is received in every township where she is going door-door for the ANC local elections campaign.

Will more come to hear the ‘Prophet of the South’ Rev. Dr Allan A Boesak’s recent homily as delivered at Emeritus Archbishop Tutu’s 90th birthday celebration, simply entitled “God has other plans for us”, reverberates. No amount of capital in evil can stand against what the Heavenly Council has agreed on.

Instead of an open contest, which is always welcomed, the CR22 attests to a paranoid group. So vulnerable that it in this season resorts to take refuge in extinction-destined COPE to come and aid their fight for survival into a second term.

It does not take rocket science to figure out the brewing confusion and rising tide of tension in the CR22 camp related to who must be his deputy. I have elsewhere noted Ramaphosa’s intentions to bring Thandi Modise from her Speaker role into Cabinet was to frustrate any woman candidacy to contest him.

While on a campaign walk, we recently heard his current deputy DD Mabuza involuntarily avail himself to be deputy president for the ANC again. This open-ended statement of personal campaigning leaves the CR22 crowd bewildered since they know the ANC’s 55th conference will not have two males in the president and deputy president, regardless of what.

They are also not sure what Mabuza meant. Was this him throwing down the gauntlet that a Ramaphosa second term cannot be without him as deputy?

The CR22 campaign is also cognizant that the ANC Women’s League is not seeking a candidate to deputise any male candidate but is emphatic that it wants a woman candidate to stand for president.

To this end, Ramaphosa, who has zero constituencies, must rely on the more confused and dwindling Mbeki crowd who does not necessarily believe in Ramaphosa but is interested in directing SA affairs from where he can. Mbeki is long attained to how weak Ramaphosa is in leadership.

It is a known fact that Mlambo-Ngcuka is a protégé of Mbeki and would be his choice for a deputy for Ramaphosa with the intention of her ultimately contesting beyond Ramaphosa’s envisaged second term.

Again, nothing wrong with that because any ANC member can share his/ her preference for whoever must and should serve. Ramaphosa finds himself betwixt his preference and that of the Mbeki crowd, and he is stretched. From this space and interest, Mlambo-Ngcuka came to be the one that delivered a lecture on Albertina Sisulu.

The CR22 appears to be playing roughshod with the legacy of a true heroine because it can and has scant regard for history but is obsessed with clinging to power by any means.

It is not strange for the ANC under Ramaphosa to parachute those who betrayed the ANC because Ramaphosa himself was parachuted into the ANC from external forces who always needed a malleable ANC.

The organisers of the event firstly failed to ask who Albertina Sisulu was and what she stood for. Had they taken the time to engage this weighty question, they may have realised their intentions from the place of origin were desecrating her humanity and liberation ethos.

As is the case with the current ANC, where capitalist self-interest turned the once glorious movement into what I postulated as a brothel, where anyone and anything has a price tag. This new un-ANC toxic ethos directly linked to Ramaphosa commodifies human beings.

Their choice to have Mlambo–Ngcuka the antithesis of Albertina Sisulu in values and principles, praxis and loyalty towards the ANC seeks to commodify the legacy of Albertina Sisulu.

Let this CR22 campaign explain why they had to resort to a COPE member to aid its intentions.

Let them come clean and admit that this intention of a choice for Mlambo-Ngcuka was under good appearance. What next will the capital captured CR22 crowd do?

*Clyde N. S. Ramalaine
ANG Resident Political Analyst