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Jacob Zuma Reflects Us
By Daniel
Submitted on 10 February, 2010 - 12:56
ShareThisIf Africans saw themselves, or at least saw how they would like to be, in Nelson Mandela, the Jacob Zuma reflects who we really are. To accuse him is to lay blame on ourselves. Zuma is a mirror that reflects what we would be in his position. After all, has he not been invited to attend Nc’ wala ceremony in Zambia later this year? If he were not a reflection of us, what would he be coming to do at Nc’ wala ceremony?
When President Zuma starts talking about what is moral, as he is doing in his e-mail to the Zambia Post newspaper on the rights of children and on his government’s efforts to promote prevention treatment, research, and the fight against the stigma attached to the HIV and AIDS endemic, we unfortunately cannot hear him because his words do not coincide with his actions.
President Zuma has no moral standing to talk about the rights of children when he is the father of a child with a woman to whom he is not married. Similarly, he has no ethical position to talk about HIV and AIDS prevention when he is not committed to one woman and does not practice safe sex. It would be like asking Tiger Woods, the USA professional golfer who it was recently revealed had a score of mistresses, to come out in favour of marital fidelity as a standard for leadership.
Zuma and the ANC Youth League are saying that character doesn’t count and that people can separate, especially if they are elderly, what they do in private from what they do in public. But you can’t subdivide character; the same ethical standards that guide in public matters will also guide in private ones.
King David’s adulterous affair with Bathsheba gives us a wonderful illustration that it is impossible to separate one’s private moral compass from one’s public moral compass. When King David found out that Bathsheba, the beautiful woman he had an affair with (private life) was pregnant, he sent her husband off to the front line to be killed in a battle (public). Character cannot be subdivided.
African people are weary of looking at the children of poverty who live without fathers, mothers, and hope. Unemployment, HIV disillusion, and AIDS have created a pain that weighs heavily on the average African. Africans are seeking leadership with the capacity and will to rally men and women to the common purpose of overcoming these challenges, but within this leadership there must also be the character that inspires confidence. Jacob Zuma has failed in both instances.
Zuma’s testimony is an invitation to every Christian leader to do some critical self reflection. Yes, Zuma must be held accountable for his private actions, but how many of us are also being held accountable for our private actions? Do we try to divorce our public moral compass from our private moral compass? Are we inspiring the people around us to overcome challenges while also possessing a character that inspires confidence? When African Christians take seriously this call to holistic living, we will start to see the emergence of new leaders in public life who will mirror this value and hope.
