In a televised debate between Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk before the 1994 national elections, Mandela publicly declared that when he became president, he would cut his salary and donate a portion of it to humanitarian initiatives.
He also said in the same debate that the ANC he led would not be a self-serving organisation with leaders who lived large in luxury like how the leaders of the National Party did under apartheid.
This was a statement of intent, and it was also underscoring how the Struggle for liberation led by him and his collective of comrades was embedded on the highest standards of ethical leadership.
The Struggle against apartheid placed people first, it was a demonstration of heroic selflessness, and it was led by people who were prepared to pay the highest price for their people to be freed.
Mandela himself paid the highest price. He spent 27 years in jail without having committed any crime. Many of his comrades died in the name of the liberation Struggle. Families were broken and some are still recovering today. There is no higher price to pay than this on behalf of humanity.
But what was also incredible about his generation of leaders was that they were ready to continue leading with this culture of sacrifice even under post-apartheid conditions were big pay cheques, benefits, and comforts of the state waiting for them.
Ordinary people were actually waiting for them to finally taste the good life after the sacrifices they made. But they were prepared to continue with their exemplary selflessness.
Therefore, the statement Mandela made at the SABC televised debate was his commitment not to surrender to the proceeds of power.
He was telling the nation that even at the highest point of his popularity and power, he still wanted to live like an ordinary South African who did not have basic needs.
He was fully aware of the living conditions of the people he was leading and he wanted to be in full solidarity with their efforts for liberation. His conscience could not allow him to take home millions in salary in a country where the overwhelming majority of the population did not have houses, roads, jobs and water.
In essence, he was a revolutionary to the core.
Fast forward to 2022, the ANC has lost these revolutionary ethics. The task of being in government is no longer about the people. Government to the current crop of ANC leadership is about the personal comforts, salaries, bodyguards, power, self-sustainability, benefits and the social access the positions give to those who occupy them.
The ANC does not comprehend that the ministerial handbook is not something to defend and justify as a revolutionary organisation that leads a country drowning deeper into a sea of poverty.
Revolutionaries are expected to mirror the plight of the people, be in solidarity with it, relate to it, and most importantly, dismantle it completely.
Of course, the ministerial handbook is part of a policy landscape of the state that ministers are entitled to, but it cannot be the central feature of debates and public engagements that ANC leaders are obsessed with.
During Mandela’s time, the ministerial uandbook was there but the country did not have its attention drawn to it because those leaders lived and led with the highest degree of selflessness and commitment – to the extent that one would overlook that they are state bureaucrats.
Today, the amount of lavish lifestyles displayed in public by government leaders, the cars they drive, the clothes they wear and the houses they reside in all demonstrate that they no longer care about the poverty keeping the majority of the population in a state of hopelessness.
The voting patterns of South Africans in the past 15 years show how disconnected the people are to the democratic promise. After every election, the public is disengaging from the formal political order because they can see that the game is no longer about them.
The ANC has been losing public confidence due to stealing from the poor and disregarding their needs. The entire electoral system itself has been recording declining numbers of voters and young people are increasingly staying away from the system as well. They are mobilising outside the state and the intensity of their demands are anti-authority.
On these terms, ANC leaders need to seriously revisit their consciences, if they still have it, and begin to be ashamed of forcing poor people to pay for their water and electricity bills – in a country were the unemployed and the working poor are being suffocated by a dysfunctional economy on a daily basis.
Ministers must pay for their own water and electricity bills like all of us because they are so overpaid compared to the majority surviving on poor wages and social grants.
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