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South Africa is a nation in conversation on many levels, the undeniable fruit of a democracy we all fought for and currently enjoy.
This past Sunday in City Press, retired Bishop Peter Storey, the Brakpan-born Methodist theologian and Duke University honoured professor, one that needs no introduction for his service in the ecumenical fraternities penned a letter simply entitled “Dear Cyril.” Naturally I, like many, read the letter with a sense of great anticipation since it is always useful to hear the elders. I am sure Bishop Storey knew his letter to the newly elected ANC president would solicit conversation.
He pays rightful and due homage to the undeniable role Ramaphosa played in the development of a South African constitutional diaphragm. In the attempt of striking a balance he juxtaposes this to what he calls a ‘misstep of a Marikana tragedy’ where he concludes Ramaphosa may have learnt not to misuse privilege or position. He then smoothens this rebuke up with “you are a uniquely gifted person” as he implores Ramaphosa to show moral courage since his predecessor the sitting South African president, Jacob Zuma, obliterated such morality. At this stage patronising is not too far a word from my mind.
He than spits a litany of accusations that he dovetails with “we as a nation are morally bankrupt.” For a moment my hermeneutical frame of expository preaching flickered with the hope of finding the ‘we’ to be explained in scholarly fashion as self-evident, intimating the humility of a joint accountability for a repugnant society beyond the narrow political leadership definition for blame.
I anticipated with bated breath the reverend to, in prophetic voice, bemoan the moral bankruptcy of a South Africa incorporated, the belligerence of banks, the depravity of cartels, and the actions of an unscrupulous business ethos that daily robs the poor. I thought the preacher would turn from Main Street, to look at those behind the pulpit and confess the church leadership equally morally bankrupt for its hypocrisy. I waited for him to speak on the academics that feed from the trough of monopoly capital, and refuse to transform South Africa’s tertiary education sphere. I had hoped the Bishop would finally beat his own chest and say the one prognosticating a moral bankruptcy is also not exempted.
Deflated, one disappointedly realised that for a retired Storey the moral bankruptcy of a society is exclusively measurable in political leadership. How then can the visiting Professor at Duke University’s epistemology on South Africa’s societal morality and degradation be this primitive, shallow, and limited? Why would this erudite mind be held so carceral to that simplistic notion of what makes for a society that is morally bankrupt and be public on such views?
READ: Dear Cyril, Cyril, are you the difference our nation needs?
It dawned on me that in Peter Storey’s mind the ANC presents a problem for South Africa not the solution; in fact the ANC is not South Africa from his vantage point. He corrects the ANC president Ramaphosa in addressing an ANC gathering in saying “ANC as a parliament of the People.” He accuses ANC members of Parliament in the frame of “when moral guts were called for, the ANC behaved like servile pawns of his patronage.”
This irrevocable claim and levelled accusation is not just irresponsible, but it is hypocritical. We know this because Storey has penned no letter to engage the Democratic Alliance leadership on their actions in the same Parliament as working against that of the masses. It appears he was on a sabbatical when Helen Zille tweeted her racial hatred through a celebration of colonialism. Storey was also silent when the late Alistair Sparks publicly shared his undeniable admiration of apartheid’s Hendrik Verwoerd.
Storey then delivers a salvo of warnings all framed with the useful invoked ‘we’, as a means of identity. The first, “we will watch, what you do with Zuma.” In blissful ignorance, if not arrogance, the Asbury Theological Seminary Professor attributes Ramaphosa supernatural powers to do something with his predecessor, in the organisational definition, and his political senior, in the State definition. It is either that Storey is in wilful oblivion not to appreciate that the ANC’s 54th conference’s mandate was that of unity, elections of top leadership, and in clarion policy direction; or he has such scant regard that he assumes the ANC is run in a dictatorship, one-man-band fashion. How is it remotely possible that Storey who participated in appointing the panel of the Truth and Reconciliation commissioners could be such amateurish about one of the oldest movements in Africa?
He tells Ramaphosa, “we will watch how you handle the two rogues elected on both sides of you”. Storey refers to the democratically elected deputy president of the ANC and the Secretary-General in David Mabuza and Ace Magashule, respectively, in a categorical sense of rogue identities? He qualified his claim in sharing his calibrated newspaper clippings mind on these elected leaders. The problem with this assertion is its inherent contradiction, since it respects the ANC in its choice for Ramaphosa while it disrespects its choices for those he calls rogues. What then affords the retired pastor a right in the superlative to character assassinate and judge when he knows there is no evidence in a court verdict? How then did he momentarily avert colliding with his own biblical teachings on judging others?
Storey in crusader mode accords Cyril the powers to “ban the undermining of the judiciary”. One is not sure from where this oft repeated alarmist claim of a judiciary as undermined emanates from, since the ANC and its leadership, both in state and organisation, upholds the rulings of the courts of law and exercise their constitutional rights to appeal. Contrary to the choreographed narrative there is hitherto no evidence that Zuma undermined any court. We must be careful not to assume taking court decisions on appeal translates to an undermining of the courts. The ANC’s consistent stance remains that of respect for the judiciary, as its decision on disallowing voters that courts ruled against to participate in its 54th conference showed. More so, its most recent national executive committee meeting, in line with that respect for the judiciary, followed through and have now suspended the provincial executive committees of Kwa-Zulu Natal and Free State. Storey is therefore misleading if not deliberately economical with the truth.
He warns Ramaphosa, “we will watch cabinet and other crucial appointments,” at this rate we now know that Storey too drank from the same cup of Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of the Anglican Church who abused the greatest day in Christian faith remembrance – Christmas – to instruct the ANC president on a Cabinet reshuffle. What is it with the clergy that they can instruct other spheres when they disallow that in their own space? What arrogance on display given the many flaws of the church in leadership as evident in sexual misconduct, debauchery, abortions, fraud, adultery, tons of destroyed lives facilitated by the politics of manoeuvring of leadership, when it turns a blind eye to its own repugnant state, self-righteously from the comfort reversed collars and cassocks dictates to others.
It appears Bishop Storey is not willing to engage beyond the surface challenges of our time. Nowhere in his letter to Cyril does he find the courage of conviction to address the corruption of an economy that remains white controlled, white-led and white monopolised. One finds the idea of a destroyed economy under the Zuma leadership very interesting for it is a claim that takes us back to November 2015, before Nhlanhla Nene was offloaded. For some, like Storey, our economy was functioning well and for the greater good until then, it delivered jobs and it worked for the masses. The good Reverend like all of us knows this a sophism.
What Storey fails to appreciate is what former president Thabo Mbeki, in a recent Power FM talk, almost was forced to share as to why the economy of South Africa, despite all the efforts in support of business initiated by his administration and continued by the Zuma administration, fails to work for the masses in meaningful job creation growth. The fact is white corporate South Africa, despite the glow of an aftermath of what the world deemed a political miracle, never believed this miracle even now and therefore refuses to invest in this miracle. Their self-inflicted fear deny them to do what all other capitalist do in their home nations, reinvest. Sadly, Storey has no appetite to firstly appreciate this reality, and second to challenge this evil of gluttony and avarice, because in Storey’s mind there is no problem, as long as the economy can get back to November 2015.
Alas, I realised the letter is devoid of any scripture from the Holy Writ to encourage a new leadership and his team, not even a commitment to pray for the ANC leadership.
I sadly concluded we are in a precarious space when respected pastors can give advice to those in political power without once ever referring to the Holy Writ or committing to pray for them.
Bishop Clyde NS Ramalaine is chairperson of TMoSA-Foundation (The Thinking Masses of SA) – A social and economic justice organisation
