DAVID LEWIS: With comrades like Boesak and Sisulu, who needs enemies?

In 1986 I spent a year at Columbia University in New  York courtesy of a Ford Foundation grant. There were many highlights, although it is now 36 years ago and most have been forgotten. However, I recall two events of that year as though they happened yesterday.

The first was my wedding after a successful cross-continental pursuit of the wonderful person who became my wife. The second was hearing — for the first and last time — Oliver Tambo speaking at an event at Manhattan’s Riverside Church and shaking his hand at a reception after that.

The occasion on which I heard Tambo speak was the Olof Palme memorial lecture on disarmament and development. Later in 1987 a young trade unionist named Cyril Ramaphosa was awarded the first annual prize memorialising the assassinated Swedish prime minister and resolute opponent of apartheid (at that time I presumed Ramaphosa’s award was in recognition of his leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers and, if so, richly deserved).

Two aspects of the church event remain with me. The first is Tambo’s opening words. After he had been introduced he said something along these lines: “Wherever I go I’m introduced as the longest-serving leader of the world’s oldest liberation movement. Is this not a reflection of failure, rather than the compliment which I believe it is intended to be?” I was struck by the unusual degree of humility Tambo evidenced in this off-the-cuff reflection.

Tambo’s humility was particularly striking because of the stark contrast immediately preceding it. After the luminaries — including gargantuan egos such as boxing promoter Don King — had filed onto the stage and the audience had settled down, we heard the unmistakable clatter of a helicopter landing on the lawn outside. A few minutes later, with a sense of timing Kim Kardashian would have envied, Allan Boesak came striding down the central aisle of the hushed church. He pranced onto the stage and delivered an introductory speech that, but for an unconvincing appropriation of the familiar cadences of a Martin Luther King, was entirely unmemorable.  He then marched off the stage, down the aisle again and the helicopter was heard taking off with its illustrious passenger.

Later that evening my wife and I trudged across a snowbound Central Park to a reception in honour of Tambo and stood in a long reception line and got to shake hands with him and Harry Belafonte. On that occasion Tambo was presented with a large cheque by Little Steven van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, the proceeds of the We Don’t Do Sun City rock concerts. Never mind that Tambo thanked Little John rather than Little Steven, the sincerity of his gratitude and his essential humility and modesty were on display again, this time at much closer quarters than earlier in the day.

Boesak wasn’t at the reception — I assume he had bigger fish to fry. He was at the height of his powers then, and boy did he let you know it!  I was a humble Western Cape-based union organiser at the time. One knew that when Boesak attended a meeting the mundanities of organisational tactics and strategy were replaced on the agenda by his performative style of politics. He may have been less overwhelming in higher councils of the struggle. I wouldn’t know. He is identified as one of the founders of the United Democratic Front. This is probably right — large, full halls suited Boesak’s style of politics.

As is well known, Boesak fell from grace, downed by the familiar combination of sex and money. His appointment as SA ambassador to the UN agencies in Geneva (I would have thought a less prominent position than he would have expected) was withdrawn after he was charged with — and ultimately jailed for — misappropriating funds from his Foundation for Peace and Justice. 

Now, at the ripe old age of 76, Boesak seems to be on the comeback trail. He has hitched his wagon to Lindiwe Sisulu, another practitioner of performative politics. And just as she recently reminded the public of her existence by penning a scurrilously stupid article in which she denounced SA judges as “house Negroes”, so has Boesak announced his return to politics in an equally scurrilous and stupid article in which he purports to draw comparisons between Ramaphosa and PW Botha.

I have no flag to fly for Ramaphosa. I’ve never participated in his leadership campaigns. In fact, I’m not a member of the ANC. But I’ve generally admired his leadership, from his days at the union to his role in the making of our constitution and his earlier stint as secretary-general of the ANC. I think I understand the dilemmas with which he must have been confronted as Jacob Zuma’s deputy president, and I’m pleased that he hung in there, enabling him to be elected ANC and SA president. 

Like so many others, I have been disappointed by facets of Ramaphosa’s presidency and impressed by others. The truth is that he has been hamstrung by the ANC. As is the fate of so many political leaders, he seems to be hard-wired to prevent, at all costs, division in his party. This has meant that despite the many admirable and powerful measures his administration has taken to combat corruption, his apparent reluctance to confront flagrantly corrupt and incompetent leaders in the ANC has manifested itself as weakness and indecision. Or worse, as hypocrisy. 

The presence of some of these less-than-stellar party leaders in government has compromised the performance of his administration. It has enabled relative minnows, of whom Sisulu and Boesak are but two, to publicly insult and deprecate him with impunity.

But PW Botha? Give me a break! That goes way beyond the terms of acceptable political discourse. I will not dignify Boesak’s trashy missive with a detailed response. Suffice to say that he prefaced his bile with an account of the refusal of the prison authorities in Upington to allow him and Sisulu to visit John Block, one of the few ANC leaders to be jailed for corruption. They were refused entry because they had not applied for permission in the manner provided for in prison regulations — they simply pitched up and because she is a minister and he an (in)famous cleric, they expected to have the rules waived. 

Boesak compares this to his treatment under apartheid. Of course, the difference is that in PW Botha’s SA the prison official would have obsequiously deferred to a minister and her dominee. In Ramaphosa’s SA they are accorded the same treatment as any other citizen. Kudos to the prison official concerned, who clearly understands the meaning of the rule of law.

For the rest, Boesak contents himself with trendy swear words such as “neoliberalism” (of which he clearly knows nothing), with defending rogues such as suspended public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, and with mandatory jibes at the judiciary. He naturally says nothing about the state of the ANC and the state Ramaphosa inherited from the Zumas and Ace Magashules.

In the snake pit that passes for politics in SA Ramaphosa would do well to heed the wisdom attributed to Sir Winston Churchill, who is said to have responded to a young Tory MP who gestured towards the opposition benches and said, “So that’s where the enemy is”, with: “In politics your opponents are in front of you; your enemies are behind you.”

• Lewis, a former trade unionist, academic, policymaker, regulator and company board member, was a co-founder and director of Corruption Watch.