GILLIAN SCHUTTE
Durban — Lindiwe Sisulu and Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma have strategically forged a partnership in the race for the positions of ANC presidency and deputy presidency.
This is good news for women in South Africa. It is also good news for those with more progressive politics since Sisulu and Dlamini Zuma are outspoken about their pan-African, decolonisation ideology. This is a breath of fresh air, given the increasingly right-wing and draconian trajectory of the Ramaphosa faction.
Sisulu has made her position clear when, in an unprecedented move for an ANC minister, she wrote an article, earlier this year, criticising the judiciary for its role in the colonial systems that prevail in a democratic South Africa – one that has kept the historically racial population in a master/ slave trope, with most black people usurped of land and economic, cultural and spiritual agency.
She went even further to defy her detractors in their vitriolic media campaign against her when she refused to crumble under the weight of rumour-mongering, insults and defamation, particularly from the corporate media tabloid journalists passing themselves off as investigative doyens.
The venom spewed against her did nothing more than expose their conservative bias in pervasive reportage that is evidently sponsored to push the politics of the corporate sector and the Western Bloc faction in the ANC and sully, apparently by any means necessary, the more Left, BRICSfriendly camp.
Despite what the detractors espouse, it cannot be denied both women have a formidable history in the ANC government. They also have educational backgrounds that put many of the top leaders to shame. Sisulu is a former liberation fighter and senior in uMkhonto we Sizwe.
She holds a senior position in the ANC national executive committee, being one of the longest-serving ministers in the Cabinet.
She has a good track record in governance, an impressive academic record and has published several academic articles pertaining to women’s contribution to the Struggle, women in the agricultural sector, and female workers’ rights, among others.
This should endear her to many women, especially if her campaign highlights her contributions to knowledge-production on issues that affect their lives.
Sisulu’s CV is studded with global awards. She is doing her second PhD with Leeds University. She has also been minister of defence and military veterans; public service and administration; housing; intelligence; human settlements; water and sanitation; and international relations and cooperation.
She is the minister of tourism. In addition, her work on the anti-corruption bill and her history of cleaning up corruption in her various departments will stand her in good stead with many voters who are sick and tired of the news around endless corruption and patronage within the ANC and the business sector.
Dlamini Zulu also has an impressive track record in the Struggle, as a student leader. She attained her medical degree at a time when to be black and female meant exclusion. She has held top office in the ANC government and was the first female chair of the AU.
Since 1994, Dlamini Zuma has been the minister of health; foreign affairs; and home affairs, in which she was credited for turning around a dysfunctional department.
Under President Cyril Ramaphosa, she served as the minister in the presidency for planning, monitoring and evaluation, with responsibility for the National Planning Commission. She is the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs.
While detractors will argue otherwise and attribute all sorts of failures to Sisulu and Dlamini Zuma in an attempt to render their experiences null and void, they can never eradicate the fact both have years of hard work, overcoming obstacles, and successes behind their names.
Where there have been failures, they have admitted to their mistakes. This is not a matter of selecting women for leadership positions simply because they are women.
They have run the gauntlet of patriarchy since they joined the ANC in their youth as well as in the post-Struggle ANC administration. They are powerful and dynamic. Their wealth of administrative and hands-on governance experience would ensure a high-level competent leadership such as we have not seen in years.
And surely it is about time South Africa caught up with the global trend of electing women to top positions, particularly as heads of state? Frankly, we are tired of the ANC’s culture of patriarchal impunity.
It seems it is more interested in using the women in its ranks as virtual human shields to hide its plentiful shenanigans.
The ANC has a history of women seemingly taking the fall for Ramaphosa’s mistakes and those of others. It also has a history of providing the conditions for woman-on-woman violence and weakening the ANC Women’s League by dividing its members.
Some might decree that the argument takes away the agency of the women in question – but we all know that in a patriarchal system, women are often forced into compromising positions merely to survive.
They are often forced to compromise their ideological values too, so entrenched is the hegemony of the patriarchy.
Patriarchy is most obviously seen in the historical norm of most countries being ruled almost entirely by men. But recent history has shown that more and more countries are electing women to high political offices, including as heads of state.
The UN’s women division has recently reported that globally, since September 2021, 26 women were serving as heads of state and/or government in 24 countries. This year saw more women being voted in as heads of state.
The report goes on to state: “Many of the women are being praised for their innovative and effective leadership and for offering unique and fresh perspectives on the challenges their countries face.”
As I’ve argued before, when women are elected to top positions that enable them to express their value systems without fear or favour, it unleashes great potential for change. Sisulu and Dlamini Zuma are high-potential conduits for the change that most citizens have been clamouring for since 1994.
What is clear though, is that Sisulu and Dlamini Zuma are perceived as a threat by white monopoly capital and their lackeys in the ANC.
Just as the sexual assault case brought against Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana became a threat to the neo-liberal economy, so too is the potential of a progressive president and deputy president perceived as a threat to the Western economic stranglehold over the land’s resources and discourse.
In this regard, we are sure to see, yet again, guns blazing to destroy the campaign through well-funded smear crusades aided and abetted by white capital and the corporate media. This is another gauntlet for the pair to run.
Perhaps it is time for them to state publicly their pro-decolonisation manifesto for South Africa because, after all, their success or failure lies with the branch votes rather than the general public.
It is in branches where the people’s hopes and aspirations are to be found, rather than in the poisonous pens of privileged journalists.
Gillian Schutte is an award-winning independent film-maker, writer and social justice activist. She is a founding member of Media for Justice.
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