THE ANC AND RELIGION: PART 5 – CONCLUSION

The fifth and final part of a series on the ANC and religion. Religion is a helpful metaphor for understanding the ANC’s political ideology and, in particular, for better understanding the politics of Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Each part of the five posts will explore this idea. Today, we bring you part 5 – a conclusion, summerising some of the main themes of the essay from which this series is drawn.

Related Stories:

• The ANC and Religion: Part 4
• The ANC and Religion: Part 3
• The ANC and Religion: Part 2
• The ANC and Religion: Part 1
• Beyond the Will of Mortal Men

THE REAL ANC TODAY – Volume: 1; Issue: 19.

INTRODUCTION
THE ANC AND RELIGION: PART 5

INTRODUCTION

Today we bring you the third in our series of five posts on the relationship between the ANC and religion. Together the five posts comprise a single essay on the ANC and religion, the central thesis of which is that religion is a helpful metaphor for understanding the ANC’s political ideology and, in particular, for better understanding the politics of Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. The five different posts – each one of which constitutes a different section of the full essay – are as follows:

• Introduction
• The ANC and Religion
• Thabo Mbeki and the truth
• Jacob Zuma and God
• Conclusion

The essay from which the posts are drawn was written in May 2008, when Thabo Mbeki was still President.

Today’s post brings the series to a close and, in turn, summerises some of the main themes that run through the essay more generally.

There are a few points worth making before turning to the final section. In the past few weeks, ANC President Jacob Zuma has twice invoked region in his political speeches. In turn, each speech provides further evidence of the degree to which religion both informs the ANC President’s political ideology (and, indeed, that of the party he represents) and the degree to which it manifests in public policy; and both are worth noting.

The first speech was delivered to a group of around 500 religious leaders in Polokwane, Limpopo, on 20 November. Zuma told them that “We need to teach our people to fear God,” before going on to suggest that the best way to do this was to make children pray before school “as it was in the past”. Zuma has a developed great knack for saying what people want to hear, even if it contradicts some or other position he might have adopted previously. No doubt his words in Polokwane were met with rapturous applause. Outside of Polokwane, however, they were received with far less enthusiasm.

The second speech was made at a religious summit, on 27 November. Zuma told the audience that South Africa has a constitution based on the principles of God (presumably he meant with the exception of gay rights): “When all of us take office in government… we raise our right hand and indeed pronounce… so help me God. I believe no one can argue South Africa is not based on the principles of God”

Later, he continued: “The bible says pray for those who are in government. I believe we must go beyond that. You must advise and criticise if there are things we do that are not in keeping with the principles of God.”

Zuma’s speech to the Polokwane is significant in another way, in that it mirrors a similar ANC speech made in the run-up to the 2004 election. In a quite excellent article ‘Doing Politics in Bushbuckridge’ – an analysis of the way in which the ANC campaigned in Limpopo ahead of the last general election – academic Isak Niehaus provides the following passage:

“Bushbuckridge’s mayor addressed about five hundred people at a local cr`eche. One of my research assistants carefully reconstructed Morema’s speech:

‘I am here on behalf of the ANC to remind you of election time. There is only one party that led you from the hands of the Pharoahs in Egypt to Canaan. Since van Riebeeck landed here in 1652 the whites have oppressed the blacks. White people took away our land. The ANC has led the politics of resistance and many people have died in the struggle. The ANC follows the teachings of Jesus Christ. When Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem he identified with the poor. That is what the ANC does. Jesus Christ suffered because he wanted to see people sheltered. The ANC provides Bushbuckridge with houses. Jesus Christ would have loved to see people living in healthy situations. The ANC provides clinics and food parcels. Jesus fought poverty and suffering in his preaching. The ANC provides grants to stop people from suffering. Like the Pharoahs, God did not support the Apartheid government. That is why they did not last. But God supports this government. It does what Jesus does. It will rule till Jesus comes back.’”

The mayor was speaking after Jacob Zuma. It is no exaggeration to say that, come election time, Zuma and the ANC intensify their appeal to religion. Certainly the majority of statements about the ANC ruling until Jesus returns were made in the run up to one or other election, and it tells you have much about the role that religion plays not only for the ANC but for the South African public more generally. The problem comes, however, when the two worlds merge and political ideology and religious belief combine to produce public policy and conduct which runs contrary to the ideals and values which define our constitution.

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THE ANC AND RELIGION: PART 5

THE ONE TRUE CHURCH

An essay on the ANC, religion, and the politics of Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma

By: Gareth van Onselen

Conclusion

“[Zuma’s view that the ANC is more important than the Constitution has] not been challenged, which in itself is sad and very unfortunate. I think in the coming period we are going to have to answer to that because if that statement is going to be the guiding light for the ANC then I think we are completely on the wrong route, completely. I cannot see that South Africa can be different from so many of the African countries which have got excellent documents on paper but when it comes to practice it’s completely something different. I think if in the end that is really what we have fought for or what we are expected to have fought for and so on, then freedom will never really dawn on our side. I think we need to be dealing with that issue as early as possible. I think all of us need to take very seriously the implications of this and we must do so with foresight, understanding full well that once one brick on the foundation of any building was skewed one way or the other the rest of the building will never become straight. It will continue to be even more skewed the higher the building goes.”[1] [Patrick ‘Terror’ Lekota]

If this essay has achieved its purpose, it should read like an opera, which builds to a crescendo. If it is accepted that, in many important ways, the ANC functions like a religion, then the mostly subtle and often implicit religious undertones that define the ruling party become more evident in the thinking of Thabo Mbeki as their consequences too become more damaging; and, in Jacob Zuma, they become both explicit and profound. In many ways, Zuma’s religious beliefs – exacerbated and inextricably linked to the ANC’s ideology – makes the implicit explicit; the implied, direct; and the danger to South Africa’s democracy, immediate.

Accepting that no metaphor holds up to close examination, a good analytical tool allows you to do two things: to explain and predict behaviour. With regards to the ANC’s particular brand of black African nationalism, religion allows us to do just that, certainly in broad terms and with specific reference to the politics of Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma.

But let me illustrate this point in practical terms. South Africa is currently in the grip of a series of sustained xenophobic attacks. How do these fit into the relationship I have described above?

In crude terms, xenophobia is a kind of racism – true, the discrimination is on the basis of nationality, as opposed to skin colour, but the principle is the same. And, as I argued in the section on the ANC and religion, racism is inextricably linked to the ANC’s grand narrative: it is the manifestation of the evil that defined the apartheid state. As far as the ANC is concerned, its continued existence today is because of apartheid, and those who still practice racism represent the remnants of that system. Inherent in that idea, is that racism is exclusively linked to white people and that black South Africans, as the victims of years of racial oppression and discrimination, are simply not capable of being racist. To admit that racism is a universal practice committed by people of all races, is something that runs fundamentally against the ANC’s world view.

And so, faced with the outbreak of intense and massively hostile discrimination within the country’s townships, the ANC government did two things in response: first, it denied any responsibility and, second, it blamed a ‘third force’.

In terms of our comparison, this makes perfect sense. The ANC government or any failures on its part could not be to blame. Nor could black South Africans, the very people it represents and whose aspirations it embodies, be capable of the sort of evil it fought for so long to destroy. They are simply victims of an invisible force (the idea of a “third force” is, in turn, linked to the sort of evil that defined and harbours after apartheid) – The innocent victims of a conspiracy.

That is a blunt description which, no doubt, ignores many complexities. Nevertheless, it serves as a helpful frame of reference.

It is quite possible to analyse and understand the ANC’s political ideology (and that of Mbeki and Zuma) without reference to religion. This is a necessary and worthwhile task. And, in the same breath, it is not possible to analyse the ANC’s ideological world view entirely using simply religion alone. But, significantly, I would argue that religion serves a useful purpose, not only as an illuminating metaphor against which to juxtapose the ANC’s nationalism but, often, as a contributing factor to its nature and the manner in which it manifests.

It is easy to downplay or dismiss the significance of the way in which the ANC conceives itself in religious terms. After all, to some degree or another, almost every political movement and philosophy boasts a set of values or principles it believes to be paramount, and systematically seeks to win others over to its world view. But the difference is fairly obvious and absolutism is the key to understanding it.

I suggested at the outset that this religious metaphor cannot be applied to every member of the ANC and, no doubt, there are those that, Zuma aside, would dismiss its significance as nothing more than an internal constraint, particular and limited to the ruling party (in much the same way that a religious zealot might argue that ‘my personal beliefs are my business’). But that would be naïve, not only because the ANC directs government and, in turn, the decisions that affect our day-to-day lives but also because religion is not just an influence on the ruling party’s ideology, but constitutes a fundamental component of the dominant African nationalist orthodoxy in South Africa today.

Consider, for example, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika (Lord Bless Africa), the first half of our national anthem. Originally conceived as a religious hymn, it has been redefined, linked to the idea of Africa and, in turn, African nationalism:

Lord Bless Africa

Lord, bless Africa
May her spirit rise high up
Hear thou our prayers
Lord bless us.

Lord, bless Africa
May her spirit rise high up
Hear thou our prayers
Lord bless us Your family.

Chorus
Descend, O Spirit
Descend, O Holy Spirit
Lord bless us
Your family.

Religion is merged with politics all around us and, more often than not, to a very particular kind of politics. Again, that is not to say religion does not have a place in society, but South Africa is a Constitutional democracy, not a religious state and, at its centre should be the Constitution; at its core, the Bill of Rights.

The ANC does not simply believe its world view is paramount. It believes it to be intrinsically true (and, by default, others to be intrinsically false). Nor does it believe in a competition of ideas. It believes its purpose is to impose its will and to eliminate opposition. It also believes it is the primary force for good in the country and, as such, no institution should be independent of it and, in its most virulent form, the Constitution is simply a consequence of – and secondary to – its own agenda.

These beliefs play themselves out in various different ways every day – be it a hostile attack by President Mbeki or an undemocratic pronouncement by Jacob Zuma. Such is the nature of this country’s political discourse that, often, we lose sight of more general trends and patterns in favour of an intense scrutiny of the details. That is not to suggest the two are mutually exclusive, only that many political decisions and positions within the ruling party – and certainly with regard to Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma – are informed by the broad framework identified above, and it is helpful to see them, not in isolation, but as consistent behaviour, indicative of a very particular world view.

ENDNOTES

[1] See Interview with Padraig O’Malley; [1 December 1996]; (http://www.omalley.co.za/); in response to the suggestion that no one had challenged Zuma’s assertion that the ANC was more important than the Constitution.

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