Six days before the African National Congress is due to gather on the University of the Free State campus to elect its future leaders, a group of four activists, writers and scholars met on Friday, December 7, at the same venue to debate the state of the nation's existing leadership.

The public debate was part of the third international multidisciplinary conference entitled 'Engaging the Other: Breaking Intergenerational Cycles of Repetition'. Chair of the conference organising committee Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela who moderated the debate said it came about because of her increasing sense that many people from different walks of life "know that something has shifted in South Africa's leadership".  She felt it needed to be explored.

The panel comprised activist Faeza Meyer, chairperson, Tafelsig Residents Unite; author Prince Mashele, director, Centre for Politics and Research; legal academic Pierre de Vos, professor of law, University of Cape Town, and scholar Barney Pityana, professor and Rector, College of the Transfiguration.

Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice Chancellor of the UFS said, as he introduced the debate, that he welcomed the fact that it was taking place in the infamous Reitz Hall. The space demonstrated, he said, that we can reach across colour and creed and even national boundaries.

Meyer has waged a grassroots battle against the City of Cape Town over land she and some 30 families occupied in Tafelsig, Mitchells Plain. Their case has gone all the way to the Western Cape High Court which last month upheld a ruling against them that they were on private land—owned by the Passenger Rail Agency for SA (Prasa)—and thus must vacate it.

"The City of Cape Town offered to relocate us to Blikkiesdorp, but we considered it a concentration camp," said Meyer. A delegation of the Tafelsig residents visited Blikkiesdorp but after hearing the tales of gangster and drugs rampant in the settlement, they opted to move to Ixalo informal settlement.

Meyers plea is straightforward: where is our leadership? She says she has approached everyone from the Mayor of Cape Town to the MEC for Human Settlements, yet nothing gets done. The tables must turn sometime, she said.

The words of Mashele also seemed to fall on deaf ears. He told of a meeting with Gwede Mantashe who berated him for "questioning" the morality of President Jacob Zuma. Did you not consider, Mantashe asked him, that your morality might be different from the President's?

Mashele's response was to write a column in which he made it clear what his concept of morality was. "My concept is very simple: morality is the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. If you can do that, you are moral. But only if you are on the side of right." He said he is still waiting to hear the President's definition of morality.

In his attempt to understand what has happened to the leadership of the country, his conclusions were that change would have to come from individuals re-engaging with the social and political life, from curbing the crass consumerism and obsession with money, from a weakening of the grip of the "party of [Nelson] Mandela" and by making sure that our leaders come from the townships and are part of the neighbourhood. "The only way to change the ANC is through the ballot box. Until they feel they may not get the majority vote, they will remain defiant of the will and needs of the people."

De Vos said South Africa is not really all that different from other countries in the world and cited, for example, Italy that had had the same party in power for many years, voted in through "free and fair" elections. He also felt that the moral leadership debate can easily make us think that some sort of "messiah" can come and save us, which is not a good way to think about society and politics.

He believes that moral leadership begins with social justice as enshrined in our Constitution. When there is such one-party domination, as there is in South Africa, however, the checks and balances of the Constitution are eroded. As long as the ANC believes there are no consequences, in other words that they will not be challenged at the ballot box, then it is inevitable that this erosion will happen.

The second danger such domination poses is that the very institutions set up very carefully to address concerns of redress and social rights, become powerless when the people entrusted to keep them are not elected by us but are chosen by the party. In addition, the law enforcement and prosecuting authorities, that receive their power from the government, no longer act independently. He cited the example of the housing debacle in Lenasia: no one will be prosecuted he said.

De Vos said we the citizens have allowed this to happen. We do not have a "language" of opposition that does not sound bitter, or a politics that isn't one of complaint. He then quoted President Barak Obama: "You are the change you've been waiting for." We can't wait for the politicians, because they will only respond when there is real accountability.

Pityana began by saying that what Jansen and his colleagues had achieved at the University of the Free State epitomised what is possible in this country. "The lesson we need to hear from this is that it is possible for things to change for the better."

The important issue was first we must take responsibility and second that leadership matters. The view held by the ANC is that it doesn't and that the "collective" will decide lies at the heart of the leadership problem. Leadership matters, said Pityana, because if collectivism is the only political discourse and the party (i.e. the ANC) is the dominant feature of government, then no one takes responsibility or is held accountable. "Our leaders should not be separated from us but should give us a vision of a better tomorrow," he said quoting Steve Biko's demand that politics should allow us "to be fully human".

Despite claims by many that Zuma is the best leader for the country, Pityana begged to differ. But more importantly he said, "We no longer have a shared value and concern about the country. We can no longer believe even when we vote: democracy no longer means anything. We need to recover a fresh sense of democracy."

For as long as the political system is dominated by party political bosses, said Pityana democracy is undermined. "I want to be sure that the people who govern me are able to do the job." And that requires we chose who we want to vote for, not the collective.

The questions from the floor also expressed despair about the current leadership—or lack thereof—and the need for more political activism. Three issues had emerged from the debate: first, that South Africans cannot wait for some "messiah" to appear and lead us from this state of disgrace; second, we need a more representative (and therefore accountable) government and third the ideals of social justice for all as enshrined in our Constitution must be reaffirmed.

But as Mashele said, are we prepared to do the grassroots work required, going from door-to-door to bring about the change we want to see? And, as De Vos pointed out, would such activism be able to create a political discourse that is based on social justice rather than on mere complaint.