My basic point of departure is that one must look to the Constitution for clarity in regard to all matters pertaining to the tiers government (the executive, the legislature and the judiciary). Often it will provide explicit guidance as to how these arms of government should operate. Other times, it requires interpretation.
My letter to the Editor of the Business Day sets out some of the basic duties of the president (as head of the executive arm of government):
"Respect your readers
Published: 2009/07/23 06:30:32 AM
Over the past 18 months I have grown accustomed to the vitriolic diatribe on offer in your newspaper, courtesy of columnist Xolela Mangcu and political editor Karima Brown.
However, recently you published two articles, written by them, which plumb new depths of journalistic mediocrity (Zuma must beware the booby-trapped calls for “leadership”, July 16, and Zuma shows adroit touch at Reserve Bank, July 20) and sadly call into question whether one should continue to treat Business Day as a serious publication.
In an effort to postulate a most obtuse argument, namely that the president should be wary of mischievous pleas for him to demonstrate leadership, Dr Mangcu overlooks the president’s function, which is , inter alia, to “promote the unity of the nation and that which will advance the republic” (as defined in section 83 (c) of the constitution ). Moreover, he ignores the constitutionally defined pledge that Zuma took on May 9, to “always … (b) protect and promote the rights of all South Africans; … (d) do justice to all and (e) devote (him)self to the wellbeing of the republic and all of its people” (schedule 2 of the constitution).
I find Dr Mangcu’s endorsement of the president’s silence and inaction on a number of critical matters stupefying, to say the least.
But the piece de resistance in Dr Mangcu’s argument is highlighted in his assertion that the president would achieve a great legacy by merely creating a nation “in conversation with itself in search of solutions for its problems”.
I have since had a conversation with myself, and decided it would be imprudent to continue contributing 35% of my income to the National Treasury because I really cannot see the value in a president, with puffed-up cabinet, who does not see it fit to fulfil his constitutional covenant. The absurdity is palpable!
Where Dr Mangcu excels in dialogic (or should that be illogic?), Ms Brown consistently insults the intelligence of your readers. To be fair to her, though, she does an excellent job of pandering to the president and his allies.
That said, her eagerness to please the Zuma-led alliance has led to a patently contradictory article. She writes that “Zuma … has used his executive power to bring back several high-profile individuals who fell afoul of the Mbeki administration”, and uses Gill Marcus and Pravin Gordhan as examples of the president’s “adroit” manoeuvring. Besides being laughable, it is either plain sloppy or a deliberate attempt to advance her pro-Zuma agenda. Surely Ms Brown has not forgotten that minister Gordhan served as the commissioner of SARS (for nearly 10 years) and that Ms Marcus served as deputy governor of the Reserve Bank (for five years) at the behest of Thabo Mbeki ?
Perhaps in the future you could encourage your colleagues to have a higher regard for your readers. Alternatively, as I mentioned to my wife, I might be better served reading The Sun — that way my expectations will be matched by the quality of the journalism.
Max Ebrahim
Cape Town"
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Duties of the President
Dr Xolela Mangcu argued in the Business Day on 16 July 2009 that those calling on president Zuma to comment on the social problems facing the country are being mischievous. His article appears below. What is interesting is that Dr Mangcu does not clarify the role of a president in a Constitutional Democracy. I deal with this is my letter to the Editor which follows in the next post:
"Zuma must beware the booby-trapped calls for ‘leadership’
XOLELA MANGCU
Published: 2009/07/16 06:38:38 AM
THIS is a plea to President Jacob Zuma to please ignore the hypochondriacs. These are the people who are so dependent on the idea of the leader as the “big man” that they are now having withdrawal symptoms.
This reliance on the big man — or “die hoofleier”, or “the chief” — lies deep in the history of this country. It’s a political culture we inherited from Jan van Riebeeck right through to all those vainglorious 19th century colonial governors. The history of the 20th century is littered with these big men, and they were all men — Paul Kruger, Louis Botha, Jan Smuts, DF Malan, Hendrik Verwoerd, John Vorster, PW Botha and FW de Klerk.
I may have missed some of these unlikable characters but I’m sure you get the drift. Dan O’Meara illustrates this culture brilliantly in his book, Forty Lost Years, the best thing written on the history of the National Party.
O’Meara also makes the observation, first made by Steve Biko in the 1970s, that people such as Verwoerd went beyond just Afrikaner nationalism to the construction of an overarching culture of white supremacy that included English-speaking whites.
In his brilliant column on this page yesterday, Steven Friedman described how the pervasiveness of white supremacist thinking produced a culture that always treats black people as suspect and gives the benefit of the doubt to the worst white people. Indeed, how does an unreconstructed racist such as David Bullard achieve the status of a superstar in the white community? Well, in the same way that a white person with a standard four could spit in the face of a black doctor or lawyer and be decorated as a hero.
Just as this society and its institutions have taken white mediocrity to be the standard, we have inherited the reliance on “die hoofleier” or “the chief” in the democratic era.
Our evolution over the past 10 years was shepherded by two very different big men — Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki . I shall resist the temptation to elaborate on the differences between them. Let’s just say one was tall and one was short — literally and figuratively.
The absurdity of the “big man” logic is that Zuma is expected to solve every major problem we otherwise cannot solve.
And if he should fail, then he would have failed as a leader, which would then confirm what the Bullards secretly wished for in the first place, so that all manner of racist stereotypes could then be confirmed.
While the pleas for “leadership” may sound the most reasonable thing for citizens to ask of a president, they are actually not that innocent. In reality, these are pleas not just for Zuma to intervene, but to intervene on the side of those who make the pleas. Clever. But don’t take the bait, Mr President. Instead, provide the platform for us to work out our problems.
If all the legacy you left was a nation in conversation with itself in search of solutions for its problems, then you would have done more than most presidents in history.
There will no doubt be times when you have to make decisive interventions. But even as you do that, avoid the trap of seeming to have answers for everything. That would make you a pretender. People don’t like pretenders. If you don’t believe me, ask your predecessor.
If I were to advise you on one thing, it would be to recommend one of the best pieces I have ever read on political leadership. It’s a chapter titled “Neither Leaders Nor Followers” in Benjamin Barber’s A Passion for Democracy. He warns us about the idea of the leader as the big man thus: “Public officials displaying an omnicompetent mastery of their public responsibilities unburden private men and women of their responsibilities.”
He warns that “the people are apt to cry ‘what will we do without him?’ and doubt whether they can go on. What is really only a departure is experienced as a loss and an incapacitation.”
Frankly this is the stuff that makes presidents think they are indispensable and gets them conspiring to extend their stay in office, by any means necessary. Who can blame them when we build them into the dictators we later decry? But if we cannot learn from our most recent history, then what shall be our guide?
Mangcu is affiliated to the University of Johannesburg and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution".
"Zuma must beware the booby-trapped calls for ‘leadership’
XOLELA MANGCU
Published: 2009/07/16 06:38:38 AM
THIS is a plea to President Jacob Zuma to please ignore the hypochondriacs. These are the people who are so dependent on the idea of the leader as the “big man” that they are now having withdrawal symptoms.
This reliance on the big man — or “die hoofleier”, or “the chief” — lies deep in the history of this country. It’s a political culture we inherited from Jan van Riebeeck right through to all those vainglorious 19th century colonial governors. The history of the 20th century is littered with these big men, and they were all men — Paul Kruger, Louis Botha, Jan Smuts, DF Malan, Hendrik Verwoerd, John Vorster, PW Botha and FW de Klerk.
I may have missed some of these unlikable characters but I’m sure you get the drift. Dan O’Meara illustrates this culture brilliantly in his book, Forty Lost Years, the best thing written on the history of the National Party.
O’Meara also makes the observation, first made by Steve Biko in the 1970s, that people such as Verwoerd went beyond just Afrikaner nationalism to the construction of an overarching culture of white supremacy that included English-speaking whites.
In his brilliant column on this page yesterday, Steven Friedman described how the pervasiveness of white supremacist thinking produced a culture that always treats black people as suspect and gives the benefit of the doubt to the worst white people. Indeed, how does an unreconstructed racist such as David Bullard achieve the status of a superstar in the white community? Well, in the same way that a white person with a standard four could spit in the face of a black doctor or lawyer and be decorated as a hero.
Just as this society and its institutions have taken white mediocrity to be the standard, we have inherited the reliance on “die hoofleier” or “the chief” in the democratic era.
Our evolution over the past 10 years was shepherded by two very different big men — Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki . I shall resist the temptation to elaborate on the differences between them. Let’s just say one was tall and one was short — literally and figuratively.
The absurdity of the “big man” logic is that Zuma is expected to solve every major problem we otherwise cannot solve.
And if he should fail, then he would have failed as a leader, which would then confirm what the Bullards secretly wished for in the first place, so that all manner of racist stereotypes could then be confirmed.
While the pleas for “leadership” may sound the most reasonable thing for citizens to ask of a president, they are actually not that innocent. In reality, these are pleas not just for Zuma to intervene, but to intervene on the side of those who make the pleas. Clever. But don’t take the bait, Mr President. Instead, provide the platform for us to work out our problems.
If all the legacy you left was a nation in conversation with itself in search of solutions for its problems, then you would have done more than most presidents in history.
There will no doubt be times when you have to make decisive interventions. But even as you do that, avoid the trap of seeming to have answers for everything. That would make you a pretender. People don’t like pretenders. If you don’t believe me, ask your predecessor.
If I were to advise you on one thing, it would be to recommend one of the best pieces I have ever read on political leadership. It’s a chapter titled “Neither Leaders Nor Followers” in Benjamin Barber’s A Passion for Democracy. He warns us about the idea of the leader as the big man thus: “Public officials displaying an omnicompetent mastery of their public responsibilities unburden private men and women of their responsibilities.”
He warns that “the people are apt to cry ‘what will we do without him?’ and doubt whether they can go on. What is really only a departure is experienced as a loss and an incapacitation.”
Frankly this is the stuff that makes presidents think they are indispensable and gets them conspiring to extend their stay in office, by any means necessary. Who can blame them when we build them into the dictators we later decry? But if we cannot learn from our most recent history, then what shall be our guide?
Mangcu is affiliated to the University of Johannesburg and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution".
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