Don’t be too hard on Zuma

“When you are carrying an ANC membership card, you are blessed. When you get up there, there are different cards used but when you have an ANC card you will be let through to go to heaven.” (President Zuma)

President Zuma has received quite a bit of bad press for this statement. Political critics have seen it as an attempt to manipulate votes from immature and ignorant members of the electorate by promising that their ANC membership card is their ticket to heaven. His statement may garner him some votes, but I doubt whether too many will be sufficiently naïve to believe his electioneering rhetoric.

Religious and moral critics there are aplenty. Some have contested his statement on the basis of the ANC’s abysmal record in the areas of integrity, industry, and service delivery. How could membership of an organization so corrupt, inept and dishonourable be anyone’s ticket to heaven?

Others have objected to the statement because it conflicts with their view that people get to heaven, not because of their membership of any political party or religious group, but on the basis of living good, moral, upright lives. After all, they argue, how could a loving God turn any good person away from the pearly gates, whatever their faith or lack of it, if they live good, decent lives? What these people don’t realize, however, is that they are really no different to Zuma. They have also invented “another way” to heaven other than the one way prescribed by God. The sad truth is that they are probably more deluded than Zuma! They really believe that good works is their ticket to heaven; whereas I am sure that President Zuma, with all his faults, is not really stupid enough to believe that heaven will be populated only by card-carrying ANC members! Surely, whatever his motive, there was some tongue-in-cheek in his statement.

God’s way to heaven is clear: Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”