THE ANC AND RELIGION - PART 4
Part four in our five part series on the ANC and religion follows below. The five sections of the series are:
1. Introduction
2. The ANC and Religion
3. Thabo Mbeki and the Truth
4. Jacob Zuma and God
5. Conclusion
Tomorrow, we will conclude the series.
THE ONE TRUE CHURCH
By: Gareth van Onselen
Jacob Zuma and God
“Divine Right: the very phrase would seem odd, as denoting a deity’s disposition of rights to mortal man or woman to rule a portion of earth, if belief in it were not an historical reality. It is surprising that those who invoked the notion did not see that it rested on nothing more elaborate than the primitive notion that might is right, for it is the deity’s vast and inexorable power to punish and dispose that enforces the ‘right’ of a king to rule by supposed dictate of what that deity wills.” [1] [AC Grayling]
If the belief that the ANC is infallible is implicit in the thinking and writing of Thabo Mbeki, it is certainly explicitly on show for everyone to see when it comes to Jacob Zuma - an openly religious man who wears his Christianity on his sleeve. Indeed, in many respects, Jacob Zuma epitomises this argument.
Religion constitutes one of two central pillars around which Zuma’s world view is shaped. In an interview in October 2006, Zuma described his philosophical outlook as follows: “I start from basic Christian principles. Christianity is part of what I am; in a way it was the foundation for all my political beliefs.”[2] The second pillar would be the ANC itself, to which Zuma remains absolutely devoted. As he put it to a crowd of ANC supporters in the Eastern Cape: “How can a person live, if not for the ANC?”[3] For Zuma, these two forces are ever-present and never separate, the one constantly informing and defining the other.
As I have argued above, while Zuma’s religiosity is certainly more extreme than the underlying ideas and assumptions inherent in the reasoning of Thabo Mbeki, they both spring from the same well. And if one accepts that the ANC more generally has many of the characteristics and traits that a religious movement might have, one can immediately see how the two reinforce and complement each other with regard to Jacob Zuma, and the damaging consequences for democracy.
With regard to the explicit, Zuma’s relationship with the church is often used as a vehicle through which he actively seeks and receives political support.
By way of illustration, as the ANC’s internal divisions were starting to turn ugly, Zuma pleaded with around 5 000 worshippers at the Ethiopian Holy Baptist Church in Zion over Easter last year to join the ANC en masse, and to pray for it, in order to fix the organisation. Later he suggested that religious people should challenge government if they felt legislation conflicted with the Bible, that “Church leaders should be able to tell government leaders if they are straying and their laws clash with the teachings of the Lord”.[4] In January 2007, the Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust organised a massive prayer service aimed at providing “moral support” for Zuma and to “bolster his coffers” ahead of his impending corruption trial.[5]
And these two most powerful guiding forces in Zuma’s life merged entirely in May last year, when Zuma was ordained an honorary pastor at a meeting of the independent charismatic churches, just out
| Posted on 18/6/2008
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