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South Africa would never be the same again. The African National Congress was surprised by
June 1976. Oliver Tambo, Thabo Mbeki and other senior leaders took to visiting the great
Vietcong leader General Giap to take advice. He told them that Umkhonto we Sizwe was
simply no match for the South African Defence Force and what the ANC needed was a mass
democratic movement to up the game.
Soweto showed the way. Young people, full of energy, angry, willing to break rules, were
ready to be led. Required was to build a power base to channel the political energy of young
people into organisation, discipline and direction. The independent trade union movement,
then as they potentially still do now, knew precisely what was to be done.
And so the stars aligned. Five years after Tambo met with Giap, the United Democratic Front
emerged. The NUM, birthed through black consciousness and led by you, became the pivot
that turned the Federation of South African Trade Union into the behemoth Congress of South
African Trade Unions. In a positioning exercise, you even took on the mighty mining industry
in the 1987 miners strike.
So it was that Cosatus largest union, the NUM, provided the ANC with the electoral
machinery in 1994. And you, a negotiator skilled by the discipline of annual July wage
negotiations with the steely and tough Chamber of Mines, were rightly recognised by Nelson
Mandela to chair the Constitutional Assembly that made our mighty Constitution between
1994-5.
For my part, I moved from the University of Cape Town as Professor of Sociology to lead the
Institute for Democracy in South Africa. With a changed mission, we supported the
constitution-making processes by taking MPs on study trips to Australia, Canada, United
States, India, the United Kingdom, Norway and Brazil and financed and organized
constitutional workshops for women, the youth and the courts.
The ANCs deal with COSATU came back to haunt it. COSATU overreached on economic
policy and Thabo Mbeki reined it (and the South African Communist Party) in. It ultimately
cost him his job. You lost to Thabo in 1999 and went into business, where you did reasonably
well. What spoilt things were Marikana, with which you are associated, wrongly or rightly.
The ANCs unwillingness to change from a liberation movement to a political party surfaced
early. As did the rent-seekers when someone convinced the Mandela Government that we
needed to retool the defence establishments with arms and equipment. The combination of
majoritarianism and rent seeking became a significant problem under Mbeki, who shielded his
executive from parliamentary accountability.
Mbeki also rejected (at the time) Home Affairs Minister Prince Buthelezis 2013
recommendation that a mixed electoral system be introduced. Mbeki said that the post 2014
election Government should look at it. But it never did. It was the final and tragic nail in the
coffin of Thabos troubled relationship with Van Zyl Slabbert, who chaired Buthelezis
Electoral Task Team, on which I also served.
2
Whatever else one may say about Mbeki, he was a moderniser and understood economics. He
wanted our country to be a leader of African modernity, not backwardness. But it is the latter
trajectory that President Jacob Zuma brought in the backdoor and with it, a flood of avaricious
rent-seekers. President Zuma is no moderniser.
As Deputy President, you havent stuck your neck out. In Parliament, you stonewall. You
should be leading the charge against corruption but you dont. But you know deep in your
heart that if we were to reverse the decline and succeed as a country and truly modernise, you
are in a powerful position to do three things:
Support Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan in his efforts to be fiscally responsible, socially
progressive, politically practical while driving out the rent-seekers that blight our land;
Dust off and update Slabberts Electoral Task Team Reports recommendation to change the
electoral system to a mixed one having 300 constituency seats and 100 proportional
representation list ones; and
Make Parliament more inclusive and share in its ownership by applying proportional
representation principles to the appointment of parliamentary house and portfolio committee
chairs.
This would only be the start, but a good one. Leadership is required, it can be done and you
have the track record to rise to the challenge.
Yours sincerely
Wilmot James
Dr. Wilmot James, MP