Johannesburg - Not for the first time, the all-powerful
African National Congress got its comeuppance this week from the man
known affectionately in South Africa as The Arch.
On the eve of his 77th birthday Tuesday, Archbishop emeritus
Desmond Tutu told the liberation-movement-turned-ruling-party he
would boycott next year's general election unless ANC leaders healed
the hurt caused by a vicious internal power struggle.
'I would be sufficiently unhappy not to vote,' the Nobel Peace
Prize laureate and former anti-apartheid activist told South Africa's
Sunday Times, referring to the party's unceremonious dumping of
former president Thabo Mbeki in September, six months before Mbeki
was due to retire.
The ANC demanded Mbeki step down over a court insinuation that he
interfered in the decision to bring corruption charges against his
foe, ANC leader Jacob Zuma.
Coming just fourteen years after millions of black South Africans
obtained a vote for the first time in 1994, thanks mainly to the ANC,
the bishop's threatened poll stay-away is symptomatic of growing
disaffection with former president Nelson Mandela's party.
Mbeki's 'recall' by the ANC was seen by many, including Tutu, as
part of a long-running settling of scores within the party that has
distracted it from the business of tending to the poor.
Reacting to what Tutu called a 'cry from the heart,' Zuma said he
would 'engage' Tutu over his remarks while rejecting the bishop's
call for him to pass over the post of president next year because of
the corruption cloud still hanging over him.
Others, including the leader of the opposition Inkatha Freedom
Party, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, berated the bubbly bishop for
'practically an endorsement of voter apathy.'
But Tutu, who, as as the chairman of the post-apartheid Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, became synonymous with forgiveness, is
unrepentant on this score.
In an e-mail interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa just
before Mbeki's resignation, Tutu said he was troubled by what he saw
as the bullying of those who dared to stand up to the ANC.
Apparently referring to the radical ANC Youth League, whose leader
Julius Malema said earlier this year he was ready to 'kill' for Jacob
Zuma and who was instrumental in Mbeki's axing, Tutu told dpa:
'Freedom is what we fought for, and yet some of our young people have
taken to shouting down any opposition.'
Yet, if some youth were yobbish 'the older generation should take
part of the blame for not encouraging vigorous debate,' according to
Tutu.
Since Mandela retired from public life in 2004, the role of South
Africa's moral guardian has fallen almost exclusively to Tutu.
Although he has lamented the manner of Mbeki's ouster, he didn't
spare him a tongue-lashing either when it came to his head-in-the-
sand attitude on HIV/AIDS and other issues.
Despite his advanced age, the Cape Town-based bishop who admits to
having harboured ambitions of becoming a doctor as a young man,
refuses to go quietly into retirement.
'I will use my own voice to condemn these destructive habits (lack
of debate), as I did the evils of apartheid,' he vowed.
Many of the problems facing the teenage Rainbow Nation, including
stubbornly high levels of violent crime, racial intolerance and
social inequality, were understandable, given the '300 years (give or
take) of institutionalized and legitimized racism' that went before.
'It's no wonder that historic dysfunction continues to bubble up
like acne on the complexion of the young democracy,' he said.
'But never give up on the South African people,' he urged.
'The vast, vast majority' of South Africa's 47 million people were
making efforts to 'understand each other, to forgive, to integrate
and to seek a unifying consciousness and national identity. They are
the true, generous and wholesome heart of the nation.'
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