Why I'm endorsing Cope - Thought Leader

As an official blogger and egomaniac I thought that it was incumbent upon me to make my position clear given the current state of our nation. The desire to write this endorsement is also driven by the false notion that people might take what I have to say seriously. As the title suggests, I fully endorse the Congress of the People (Cope).

I have defended the ANC on numerous occasions on the “internets” (George Bush thinks that the internet is the “internets”), particularly on the video-sharing website known as YouTube. My defence of the ANC and the government got me into some heated exchanges with some fellow South Africans. I have even taken heat from right wing racists. (I’ve always wondered why are there no left wing radical racists? Just a thought). I digress.

I have even gone as far as to say that if Jacob Zuma does become the president of the Republic it wouldn’t be the end of the world because the world’s leading ratings agencies like Moody’s and others said that there would be no major policy shifts if Zuma takes over. I said these things after Polokwane. As uncertain as I was of a Zuma presidency at the time, I thought it prudent to give the man and the new leadership a chance after his camp was elected into office.

I went on to quote Warren Buffet who once said, “You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will.” I made the example that South Africa has a strong constitution and an independent judiciary. So even if a fool runs the country it will be fine because of the structures in place. I was also fully aware of the fact that some people would deliberately twist my words and imply that I called Jacob Zuma a fool.

I have even gone as far as to say that white people need to join the ANC and stop moaning so that they can change it if they don’t like it. If you complain from the sidelines, nothing will change I said. I was taken to task for making these suggestions. But these suggestions stimulated the kind of debate I had hoped they would on YouTube.

I said all those things because I believed them at time. Indeed the ANC will change to what it was meant to be, perhaps even better than what it was meant to be, but it won’t happen next year or tomorrow. The ANC won’t just change. When it finally decides to change it will be too late. It will be because it will be forced to. The most dynamic organisations are the ones that change before they have to.

The reason I endorse Cope is because of a Martin Luther King quote Barack Obama often used during his campaign. He would say, “I am running because of what Dr King referred to as ‘the fierce urgency of now.’” Obama never quoted the whole passage; he always quoted those five words, “the fierce urgency of now.”

Allow me to quote Dr King’s entire passage: “We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood-it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect.”

I don’t want my generation to be in that invisible book that says we were not vigilant and that we were neglectful when we saw that we were headed towards a cliff.

As Dr King so eloquently put it, “There is such a thing as being too late.” Zimbabwe is a case in point. When the people of Zimbabwe decided to stand up, it was too late.

I believe that we cannot wait for another five years for the ANC to change. The world is in a global financial crisis. We cannot afford to wait when the poor get poorer. We cannot afford to wait another five years for justice to be served differently depending on one’s political standing. We cannot afford to wait another five years for the ruling party to remove the president from office at a whim. We cannot afford to have the entire machinery of the ruling party dedicated to making sure that an individual never gets his day in court. We cannot afford to wait when our judges are being called counter revolutionaries. We cannot afford to be too late.

I want to be able to say to my children that when the time came for me to stand up, I did. And not only did I stand, I walked and ran. Because standing is not enough; acting is what counts.

I support Cope’s call of having a president elected by the people. Right now, the people are under the impression that they elect a president when in fact it is parliament that does.

I endorse Cope because it will be accountable to the people. The leadership will not tell the people what to do; it is the people that will tell the leadership what to do. The people lead the movement.

I support Cope because it will be South Africa’s first truly diverse political party, where all members of our country will be represented in their numbers. The enthusiasm for Cope spans racial, religious and class lines.

One of the things that impressed me the most about Cope was when one of its youth leaders said something off colour about the president of the ruling party. An apology was issued. There were no excuses, no attempt to spin what had been said, there was no going to a laager to defend the indefensible. Cope did not wait for other political parties to speak out before an apology was issued. We cannot say the same thing of the ruling party. We waited for months for an apology for some of the statements that were made by its youth leader. Even the apology was a non-apology; they went on to blame the media. One of the things I’ve learnt is never ruin an apology with an excuse.

Cope is not perfect. No political party is. It would be a mistake to believe that there is. Even churches cannot claim that. But what I hope Cope will do, is at least to try to make this country move forward, look ahead and not backwards. I know that it will give the people of this nation hope that there are better days ahead for us as a nation.

I am not unmindful of the fact that some people will ask me how I can endorse an organisation that has no policies. Well, the people set the policies and I believe in the wisdom of South Africans. Who better than they that live the day to day to existence to set a policy than someone who no longer knows what it is like to live as an ordinary South African? They know better than any government official.

These are just some of the reasons I endorse Cope.