Call to vote with your heads, not your hearts

December 13, 2007 Edition 1 - Pretoria News SOUTH AFRICA
I believe that Africa's oldest and highly profiled liberation movement is at a crossroads.
After 14 years of rule, the ANC is still battling with the pangs of post-apartheid freedom, as manifested by the robust exchanges between the comrades.
Nevertheless, the ANC still enjoys mass-based support on a scale that is almost unrivalled in the world, despite its current wrangles.
Xhosas and Zulus, Hindus and Muslims, English-speakers and Afrikaners, Jews and Christians, Khoisans and "Coloureds", have all found shelter in the "broad church" of the ANC.
The collective leadership of the ANC, from Luthuli to Tambo to Mandela, set a very high standard of leadership.
It is through these men that South Africans were able to find a common purpose.
Throughout the Struggle, many people sacrificed their lives, careers, properties and families in support of the ANC, which many times appeared to be fighting a losing battle against the apartheid regime.
Yet, despite the high cost of victory, being the "broad church" that it is, the ANC was big enough to forgive and shelter apartheid collaborators in the new democracy - something that may be a festering source of irritation among loyalists.
Experts will concede that politics is an agent of change, a powerful catalyst that strives to accommodate divergent groups in a peaceful union.
The ANC has governed remarkably since the transition.
The fact that the 2010 Fifa World Cup is to be staged here is proof of the confidence we inspire as a nation.
We are the heartbeat of Africa.

Sadly, not everything the ANC has done has been a success.
Black Economic Empowerment is seen by many as a "get rich quick" scheme that favours the few at the expense of many.
It is policies like this that have created a dangerous chasm between Luthuli House and the masses.
While the leadership is engaging each other in a no-holds-barred tussle in Polokwane for the presidency, ordinary supporters are hoping the ANC can once again unite the masses in this turbulent time.
Unity remains uppermost in the minds of those who have given so much and suffered so much for the ANC.
The dream of a non-racial and non-sexist democracy, sprinkled with ubuntu and defined by the spirit of ubuntu and batho pele is still a cherished one - and one that has yet to be fully realised.
In the ANC, populist leaders will come and go.
The "broad church" that is the ANC will weather the storms and stand proudly in the sunshine that follows, held up by the pillars of unity, non-racialism, social justice and human rights.
Now is therefore the time for a clarion call to disciplined delegates to vote with their heads, and not their hearts, to set into motion a holistic strategy of putting the interests of all South Africans first.
Unite us.
Marlan Padayachee

Dateline: Pretoria, South Africa
13.12.2007

First published in the Pretoria News