What can Zuma offer SA?

Now is the time to get real — starting with Jacob Zuma. In response to the outpouring of support for Terror Lekota, Zuma has said that no single person is more important than the ANC.

Well, he should be the first person to heed that advice.

Could Zuma explain what he is offering South Africa that makes him singularly so important for our future?

We know what Thabo Mbeki did right and what he did wrong. What is Zuma’s vision and plan of action? What role does Blade Nzimande have in this? If he and his communist party ran independently in the election, they would hardly be a blip on the radar screen, and yet we have to listen to the cliché-driven drivel that this man sprouts ad nauseum.

He has no constituency, so why is he so important to Zuma? Zwelinzima Vavi is a different deal, because he does have a constituency.

Notwithstanding the tripe he sometimes talks, he does display a sense of balance and reality from time to time. Admirably, he has also not tried to muscle into the power positions at the feeding trough.

President Kgalema Motlanthe has thus far not put a foot wrong, staying out of the party-political bun fight.

He has displayed admirable leadership qualities, and has certainly brought a level of sanity and calm to SA in the middle of the turmoil. He is proving to be far more of a healer and true leader than Zuma.

Lekota’s movement will inject much-needed vitality into SA’s democracy by hopefully facilitating the loss of a two-thirds majority for the ANC.

If he were to gather a growing pool of like-minded leaders in an opposition alliance, all South Africans would be the richer for it.

We have some great potential leaders in SA, across the spectrum of all the parties, and we certainly do not need to be beholden to the strangulating politics of the Zuma freaks as manifested by the likes of Nzimande, Julius Malema, Judge John Hlophe and Jackie Selebi.