Leadership means service, not domination
Comment: There are parallels between the elite in ZANU PF and the elite in the ANC. Former South African president Thabo Mbeki says the ANC party has been taken over by negative elements Mandela warned against two decades ago and has become wholly corrupted.
For example, Mr Mandela said in 1997: “A number of negative features within the ANC and the broad democratic movement have emerged during the last three years… “One of these negative features is the emergence of careerism within our ranks. Many among our members see their membership of the ANC as a means to advance their personal ambitions to attain positions of power and access to resources for their own individual gratification.
... In Dr A.B Xuma’s Presidential Address in 1941 to that year’s ANC National Conference, he said: “To Congress we must be loyal and true. For Congress, we must forget any personal or sectional interests or gain. We must put the cause and the interests of the people before any expediency…To be true leaders, we must put the interests and welfare of our people above our own.”...
In a December 1955 Letter to the ANC, published in January 1956, Dr Xuma said: “Leadership means service for and not domination over others. True and genuine leaders serve the cause of the people and do not expect the cause to serve them or become a source of profit and honour for them. Africa expects all her sons and daughters to serve the cause of the people loyally, sincerely and honestly.”...
The ANC has become wholly corrupted - Thabo Mbeki
Politicsweb - Thabo Mbeki
31 October 2017
Former president says party has been taken over by negative elements Mandela warned against two decades ago (27 Oct)
Lecture by the Patron of the TMF, Thabo Mbeki, on the Occasion of the Celebration of the Centenary of The Birth of Oliver Reginald Tambo: Johannesburg, 27 October, 2017.
Members and representatives of the Oliver and Adelaide Tambo Foundation, our hosts this evening;
Dear Members of the Tambo family;
Fellow South Africans;
Comrades, friends, ladies and gentlemen:
Had OR Tambo been alive, today we would have gathered in happy gatherings throughout our country to wish him a very happy centenary birthday!
However as we meet today, to mark this centenary, we still wish to convey a heartfelt happy birthday message to Oliver Tambo, our beloved OR and esteemed leader, certain that he will hear our message wherever he is.
Accordingly, today, October 27, 2017 our people, joined by the peoples of the rest of Africa and the world, stand up and say in unison – happy birthday our dear and respected Oliver Tambo, our beloved OR!
However, at the same time as we celebrate a hundredth birthday, we have gathered here today at a time of great stress for OR’s movement, the ANC, and his country, South Africa.
The comments we will make about Oliver Tambo as we celebrate the centenary of his birth will emphasise two matters.
One of these is that periodically the ANC has had to confront and respond to threats which challenged its very existence.
Another is that these threats and the ANC responses have also been related to the development of our country.
This describes what has been somewhat of an umbilical cord between the development of the ANC and the evolution of South Africa.
In this regard I would like to argue that for half-a-century Oliver Tambo stood out as a defining player in terms of the construction of the relationship described by the respective evolutions of the ANC and South Africa.
I have just referred to what I described as threats which challenged the very existence of the ANC...
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