Challenges of governance that Tambo spoke about are confronting all of us

A former colleague and mentor Chris Mabuya this week reminded us about Madiba’s statement in his book, Long Walk to Freedom. Nelson Mandela said: “The truth is that we are not yet free, we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not yet taken a final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road.”

According to Mabuya, part of this quote says “after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb”.

Considering what Mandela said, we have yet to climb the second hill after the first one of freedom, or attainment of democracy, was conquered. In fact we are unsure where we are and what we should do to move forward, or to get ourselves out of our current quagmire.

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Perhaps in order for our current leaders in government to understand and to get a wakeup call, it is important to remind them about what their own revolutionary fathers said about the present governance chaos before it happened. Lest they forget.

Before Mandela, his predecessor and former ANC president Oliver Tambo once cautioned his fellow comrades about the challenges of governance, looking ahead when the then liberation movement was nowhere near the levers of power.

“Comrades, you might think it is very difficult to wage a liberation struggle. Wait until you are in power. People will be expecting a lot of services from you. You will have to satisfy the various demands of the masses of our people. In the process, be prepared to learn from other people’s revolutions. Learn from the enemy also,” Tambo said.

Indeed, the challenges of governance that Tambo spoke about are confronting all of us. We are grappling with corruption with leaders heads and shoulders deep into scourge.

We are confronted with this because we had not prepared for the next hills as we thought the first hill was the last hill to climb. This despite Madiba and Tambo having alerted us to this possibility.

At the stage we are now, we are in the ’80s, where we are pursuing the notion of rendering the country ungovernable. The push to occupy the unoccupied space and we believe for our demands to be met, we must hold someone hostage or burn a clinic, or local library when we need a road to be built, because our ’80s mindset dictates that to us.

Democracy has not changed us but it has instilled in us a new culture of entitlement and renewed violence.

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How do we explain the torching of public property such as libraries and clinics, the preventing of children from going to school when we need a road to be built in our area.

As Mandela observed, this road is even more difficult. We have seen a former state president being in courts for the past 20 years and even jailed for a few months, another facing uncertainty over keeping millions of dollars on his farm.

A top ANC official is jailed in the Northern Cape for corruption and another put on step-aside by his party, also for graft, while a host of other officials are involved in criminal shenanigans. These are the difficulties of governance that Tambo referred to and our leaders must find the courage to climb over the next of the hills that Mandela talked about.