US president George Washington, renowned for his unflinching honesty, was apparently not as squeaky clean as American historians would have us believe.
The New York Society Library has discovered that the first president of the United States borrowed two books in 1789 and did not return them.
US president George Washington, renowned for his unflinching honesty, was apparently not as squeaky clean as American historians would have us believe.
The New York Society Library has discovered that the first president of the United States borrowed two books in 1789 and did not return them.
The library says it will not pursue the $300 000 fine he now owes, but they would like the books back. When Washington took the books out he did not even bother to sign them out properly, as any good citizen would, he rather had his aide scrawl the word “President” next to the title.
If someone universally accepted as the benchmark for honesty cannot be trusted, who then can we trust? If the man who reputedly never told a lie can allow the greatness of his office to influence his decision making, should we be surprised if other lesser mortals succumb to the temptations of power?
No, we shouldn’t, and it would be unreasonable to expect even the ANC leadership to resist the enticements of power or so says the party’s Secretary General Gwede Mantashe.
In an extraordinary statement delivered at Johannesburg City Hall on Friday, Mantashe admitted what the opposition parties have been saying all along that the ANC is corrupt.
He said, “What we inherited actually corrupted us and therefore we are actually managing a corrupt system and a wrong value system.” He blames the existing capitalist system that prizes individual acquisition and material wealth for corrupting the ANC.
This admission could be good news, because often the most difficult part of correcting such a profound flaw is finding the courage to identify it openly.
Mantashe has bravely admitted that the ANC leadership is corrupt so now he can progress to finding ways of eliminating that which has seriously undermined the standing of this once great organisation.
Perhaps Mantashe can restore the impeccable reputation that the ANC enjoyed when Nelson Mandela became the first democratically elected president of South Africa.
