The Sunak phenomenon shines a harsh light on our politics

Britain has come a long way since Winston Churchill in 1931 described Mahatma Gandhi as “a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir… striding half-naked…”

Rishi Sunak’s elevation to the UK prime minister’s office, which Churchill twice held, is almost as historic as Nelson Mandela’s election as South African president, or Barack Obama’s victory in the United States. What would Churchill have thought?

While it is significant that the once-mighty empire is now led by a son of former subjects – from East Africa – history is not short of examples where tables were similarly turned. Publius Helvius Pertinax, son of a freed slave, was Roman emperor in AD 193. Later that year, Lucius Septimius Severus, born in what is now Libya, became the first black Roman emperor.

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Many South Africans scoff at things colonial and British. But consider this: in addition to his Asian, Hindu heritage, 42-year-old Sunak is also the youngest UK prime minister for more than 200 years. William Pitt The Younger was 24 when he became prime minister in 1783.

Compare Sunak to contenders for the ANC presidency. Cyril Ramaphosa will be 70 next month. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will be 74 in January. Mercifully, Jacob Zuma, who turned 80 in April, seems out of contention.

The former colonial power is ahead of South Africa in terms of generational change and diversity. Interestingly, as pointed out by Piers Morgan, all UK Labour Party leaders to date have been white males. In contrast, UK Conservatives have “had three female leaders and two male leaders from ethnic backgrounds”.

It is fashionable to describe recent changes in the UK in gloomy terms. But the British economy is in better shape than ours. So, too, is their democracy. The spate of resignations triggered by Sunak stepping down as chancellor on 5 July and culminating in Liz Truss ending her short career as prime minister on 20 October, was indeed dramatic. But it contained something missing from our politics.

In the UK, politicians are likely to quit when it is the right thing to do. That doesn’t happen often in South Africa, where politicians like to hang on. We even have disgraced figures such as Zuma and Zweli Mkhize attempting comebacks when their names have not been cleared.

The Sunak phenomenon shines a harsh light on our politics. But perhaps we won’t really hear the wider UK’s verdict on diversity until Sunak leads his party in a general election. He was voted in by MPs, no one else. He is a worthy candidate.

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His immense wealth – and that of his wife – should not be a factor. An Oxford graduate with an MBA from Stanford in California, he is well respected by colleagues for his eloquence and fine mind. Yet, he lost out to hapless Truss when the previous leadership contest was widened to include party members, not only MPs.

Did race play a role? We still don’t know how he would fare among the general electorate; whether old prejudices have faded sufficiently. Twenty years ago, Churchill was voted the greatest Briton of all time. His towering achievements outweighed any memories of decades-old racism. Will Rishi risk it?