Publication: Cape Times Issued: Date: 2006-08-24 Reporter: Dominique Herman Reporter: Reporter:

Forget Top Job, Tutu tells Zuma

 

Publication 

Cape Times
Date

2006-08-24

Reporter

Dominique Herman

Web Link

www.capetimes.co.za

 

If you love your country ...

If Jacob Zuma loved South Africa, the best action he could take was not to participate in the presidential succession race, said Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu at a Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture last night.

Tutu was addressing a packed venue in the Whale Well at the Iziko SA Museum that included deputy foreign affairs minister Aziz Pahad, Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille and Education Minister Naledi Pandor in the audience.

"Jacob Zuma is a warm, approachable person, but so far I can make out, he did nothing to stop his supporters," said the Nobel peace laureate, referring to the unruly behaviour by hordes of Zuma supporters outside the Johannesburg High Court during Zuma's rape trial.

"It is deeply distressing as a presidential candidate that he shouldn't have found the conduct of his supporters as reprehensible," Tutu said.

Zuma didn't seem to be embarrassed by it *1. His lack of response to their behaviour, which sought to intimidate the plaintive, was "conduct anathema in a head of state".

Tutu said he would find it difficult to have as his president someone who did not apologise or express "contrition" for having sex with a woman young enough to be his daughter, while he led the country's moral regeneration campaign.

Zuma had made irresponsible comments about HIV/Aids during his trial (such as taking a shower after sex to counter contracting HIV) in the midst of SA's Aids pandemic.

"The best thing he could do is to elect not to take part in the succession race if he loves the country *2," Tutu said, adding that a leader cared about the wellbeing of the people and not his or her "self-aggrandisement".

A real, true leader demonstrated "selfless altruism".

"During the days of our struggle our people were magnificently altruistic, inspired by high and noble ideas.

"I believed those noble attitudes would be automatically transferred to hold sway in the new dispensation," Tutu said.

"Us South Africans were a special breed, a cut above the hoi polloi. Now, what a notch down," he said.

"Devoid of a sense of shame and common decency … they have robbed the most needy through pocketing their social welfare grants," Tutu said, referring also to Travelgate and the arms deal as among the scandals to have rocked the country in recent years.

It was "high time" leaders were elected directly by the people. "We need to make those elected more accountable to the electorate than to their party bosses."

The lecture marked the tenth anniversary of the death of Wolpe, political intellectual, activist and social theorist.

With acknowledgment to Dominique Herman and Cape Times.


*1       Far from being embarrassed by it, he roused the rabble by dancing and singing machine gun songs.


*2      This kind of conduct shows that one loves one's self and one's supporters more than the country.