In five days the national executive committee of the ANC meets in one of its most crucial moments in the history of the organisation. It is a meeting where ANC president Thabo Mbeki and his deputy Jacob Zuma are expected to table the results of two months of consultations over the crisis precipitated by allegations of corruption against Zuma.

The allegations have seen Zuma lose his job as number two in the country and criminal charges laid against him. These events have unleashed a crisis within the ANC that has divided the organisation between those who support Mbeki and those who stand with Zuma.

In the middle of all these, the previous NEC meeting ordered Mbeki and Zuma to meet and provide leadership on the way forward. Their report will be tabled on Friday.

From that point, the NEC must take charge and provide leadership. The ANC is the ruling party of this country and whatever happens within it affects all South Africans.

There is now a definite tribal element in the debate. There is a sense that what the Zuma camp wants is nothing less than the withdrawal of charges against him simply because of who he is and the kind of street support he is able to muster.

Both are reprehensible positions and developments which can only be stopped if the NEC comes out of its meeting with a clear statement of where the ANC stands on the matter.

And that stand must begin with an assertion that the NEC stands by the rule of law. It must then accept that just as Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Tony Yengeni, Allan Boesak and the travelgate MPs faced their own Armageddon in court, so too must Zuma. There cannot be laws for Zuma and laws for the rest of humanity.

The NEC must decry attempts to use political muscle, ethnicity and gullible youths to interfere with the justice system.

The NEC needs to inject into this nation a sense of faith in the leadership of the ANC and of the country, by showing that it and the ANC will not be bullied into submission.

This will not be easy, as the amabutho *1 are being amassed into formation for the mshini-wam *2 brigade *3. But then leadership was never meant to be easy. Leadership is about providing light and hope in the darkest of dark nights. It is about finding paths where none seems to exist.

We have no doubt that the NEC has the capacity to deliver light in this dark hour, and a path in this maze where right and wrong are being blended into a political song.

What must not happen is to sacrifice principles that make this nation what it is by trying to mould a unified organisation at the expense of truth, justice and the country's long-term stability. No single individual is worth that much.