JUSTICE MALALA | Long speeches about ‘our people’ are done, we need politicians in orange overalls

People need to go to jail.

Very little in our politics makes sense today primarily because there is no connection between many political leaders’ words on the campaign trail and their actions when installed in office. There is no accountability and there is no consequence for wrong-doing.

A yawning gulf has appeared between the representative and the represented. Voters have been betrayed for so long and to such an extent that they no longer have faith in their leaders or in the institutions that these politicians occupy. Every day now, voters read about politicians lining their pockets and then flaunting that ill-gotten wealth in the faces of the poor.

One can comment on what is emerging at the Madlanga Commission and in the ad hoc committee on police malfeasance in parliament for days on end, but at the end of the day it comes down to this distance between voter and representative. The ‘leaders of the people’ are now the looters of the people — and nothing happens.

In the 1980s and 1990s leaders of the liberation struggle would pepper their speeches with adoring references to ‘our people’ and ‘our communities’. Our people, in these speeches and discussions, displayed an almost extraordinary solidarity and unity in the fight against apartheid’s cruelties and iniquities.

The use of ‘our communities’ by many of our leaders has almost dried up since 1994. It has become hard to employ such language, even for the dominant ANC’s leaders, when the leaders are enjoying the good life in the suburbs where they live while their constituencies are battling life’s daily hardships and cruelties in the shack lands, villages and townships.

It is harder to employ such language when, by its actions and posture, the ruling elite demonstrates that there was never such a thing as ‘our people’ or ‘our communities’. Instead, there were always those who rape and pillage from their offices of power and privilege, and those who endure hardships after being betrayed by the same people who abused them by using their plight to enter high office.

We have become much like Paul Biya, the 92-year-old life president of Cameroon who lives in Geneva and visits his country every so often to show off his wealth. Only, in our leaders’ case, Geneva is Sandton and Hyde Park.

The distance between ‘our people’ and their leaders now is as wide as the ocean. Our people’s leaders are sleeping in criminals’ penthouses; their leaders are buying cars costing an astonishing R52m with money stolen from dying patients and collapsing hospitals; their leaders are found with murder suspects in their Sandton homes when they are being arrested. All this while ‘our people’ are slaloming through garbage dumps and using plastic drums to fetch water from tankers owned by councillors’ relatives.

We have become much like Paul Biya, the 92-year-old life president of Cameroon who lives in Geneva and visits his country every so often to show off his wealth. Only, in our leaders’ case, Geneva is Sandton and Hyde Park.

The tragedy of the past 31 years of our democracy is that we have leaders who have not sought to build anything, but have instead done everything in their power to run away from that which raised them and could be beautiful with their help. We have abandoned our streets to live in Sandton, continuing to fund these enclaves and have done little or nothing to build other nodes into centres of dignity, pride, and excellence.

I am ashamed to say when people speak about “apartheid puppets” such as the homeland leaders Lucas Mangope and others they point at excellent schools, strong and durable roads, massive stadiums and resilient neighbourhoods and developments that they built. They point at industrial nodes which employed people. Now the people do not work. And there are no factories.

When ‘our people’ speak of the 31 years of democracy they point at corruption, looting and failure. How low we have come. How we have debased the promises of selfless leaders through the ages who promised a new vision and a new age of servant leadership.

What is to be done?

The words are all there. There isn’t a concept of leadership that has not been explored and debated by many of our current leaders. Many of them come from rigorous and intense lessons in leadership, both academic and practical, at the feet of people like Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo.

It is sad to say, but we now need a core of leaders who will ruthlessly implement an accountability-based ethos in our country. It is not enough that we are hearing these stories at commissions of inquiry. We need people to be arrested and convicted. We need politicians in orange overalls. Right now, finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s top job should be financing the National Prosecuting Authority to do everything it can to speedily and justly get charges against corrupt politicians brought before functioning courts.

Long speeches about our people are done. The only way to restore trust in our society is if the law is working, is seen to be working, and is daily seen to apply to all without fear or favour. People need to go to jail.