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'Zuma is a gift to mankind'

PRINCE Mashele is at it again. He has launched an inexplicable outburst against President Jacob Zuma, "The Worst Shall Govern" (Sowetan March 19).

At some point Mashele will hopefully overcome his bitterness against Zuma to provide analysis that is worth taking note of. Insults are a waste of paper and ink.

Mashele tells us that the president is less of a leader solely on the basis that he is uneducated. What a shallow analysis!

We will not start counting the many outstanding leaders of our Struggle and elsewhere who have been a gift to mankind with no or very little formal education.

The notion that for one to be a leader one must have gone through tertiary education or possess formal qualifications is elitist and flawed. It is a tired perspective resurrected by Zuma's opponents when they run out of arguments.

Zuma is a self-taught, tried-and-tested organic intellectual whose lack of formal education has never been a hindrance in his life.

Mashele fails to properly contextualise leadership. He elevates formal education as the only criterion for leadership and fails to look at the totality of a person's experiences in life. It would be helpful for him to read or re-read Antonio Gramsci on organic intellectuals.

Mashele's pseudo-analysis concludes that Zuma has no credentials. Really?

This about a man who gave 10 years of his life on Robben Island for his convictions?

This is a man who came out of prison and continued to pursue the aims of the ANC as an underground operative, doing good work within the trade union movement before he went into exile.

Zuma has done exceptionally well in many leadership positions in the ANC and government. He has been on the ANC national executive committee since 1975, taking up difficult tasks, including heading the party's intelligence.

Zuma is hardly credited for his sterling contribution in helping bring peace to KwaZulu-Natal. Just before his return from exile, he worked tirelessly in negotiating with members of the Afrikaner community who were willing to start talks with the ANC.

On his return, he worked tirelessly in rebuilding the ANC, serving as both its deputy general secretary and chairman of KwaZulu-Natal ANC.

He exported peace beyond our borders, assisting president Nelson Mandela in the Burundi peace process, a task he performed with flying colours.

Zuma gave countless hours of his time to Burundi to get it onto the path of peace.

Today he is a dding new life to government and governance. When Zuma said he would change the way government works it sounded like rhetoric. But those changes are apparent now . For the first time, ministers signed performance and delivery agreements.

Reports are provided to him directly and to Cabinet. He established a department that is able to give him quick snapshots of the performance of every department.

The National Planning Commission has been an outstanding achievement. The draft national development plan has opened a window to the future. This resulted from his vision.

More importantly, the infrastructure revolution that he launched during the state of the nation address on February 9 marked a turning point for the country's history.

Mashele should judge Zuma on his work.

  • Moshoetsi is the communications research chief director in the Presidency

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