Red Alert: ANC Lives, ANC Leads: The poverty and political bankruptcy of RSA opposition and its media cheerleaders
Often the opposition parties in South Africa, supported by sections of South African media lament about the lack of leadership in our movement and society. But perhaps the biggest weakness of our democracy is not lack of leadership in the ANC and society, but the bankruptcy of the opposition parties and the dangerous cheerleading done by sections of the media often hypocritically celebrating this mediocrity and bankruptcy.
Perhaps the paucity of serious debates about the direction our country should take arises out of the fact that there are no substantive issues with which as the ANC we can seriously engage with from the opposition. This opposition, together with its media cheerleaders, are more informed by an agenda to dislodge the ANC from power than on how to build a better South Africa, especially for the overwhelming majority of South Africans.
Just a few facts. Through the leadership of the ANC we have virtually eliminated the violence sponsored by the apartheid regime in Kwa-Zulu Natal and elsewhere. We correctly attribute this to Madiba, but conveniently forget it was President Zuma who was sent by Madiba and the ANC NEC to lead this effort.
Through the ANC's principled commitment to the primacy of the unity of the African people as the glue to building a broader South African national unity, we have made huge strides towards national unity. Some of our Cuban comrades often remind us that nowhere else in any part of the world has any government built, for free, more than 3 million houses for the poor in a 20 year period compared to what we have done since 1994!
The ANC government has stubbornly stuck to its spending on, inter alia, education over the last five years despite being in the midst of one of the worst global economic crises since the 1930s. That President Zuma has tripled the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) from R3.1bn in 2009 to R9.6bn in 2014 is not only a good story to tell, but also displays a serious commitment to the working class and the poor by the ANC-led government.
The political bankruptcy of the opposition in South Africa is only matched by its hypocrisy. At the heart of the bankruptcy of opposition politics in our country is that it is unable to offer any credible or better policies than the ANC. Nor can any of the opposition parties claim such a record and service to the South African people. That South Africa is a much better place than it was in 1994 is an indisputable fact! And that we are in a better place because of the leadership provided by the ANC to society cannot be challenged. Instead the opposition parties can only make fools of themselves by suddenly discovering that Presidents Mandela and Mbeki were the best compared to President Zuma.
What has the opposition been up to in the midst of all this? Let's illustrate the hypocrisy on their current pre-occupation, the Nkandla report. The two previous Public Protectors, Justice Selby Baqwa and Lawrence Mushwana, in their capacities as public protectors, were largely mauled by the DA and its predecessors, and virtually by all the opposition parties, including media cheerleaders. There was no injunction to anyone to stop criticising the Public Protectors at the time. With due respect, when the two previous public protectors were being viciously attacked by the DA, neither Archbishop Tutu and Archbishop Thabo Mokgoba nor Advocate Bizos came to their defence as they are doing now with Madonsela.
The danger with all this is that it confirms what many of us have been suspecting that there is no principled defence of the rule of law in all this, but it is about discrediting the ANC government, and particularly President Zuma. Similarly there is no principled fight against corruption, but an oppositionist fight. Some of us have to be convinced otherwise. If the Public Protector finds wrong with government, especially against President Zuma, she is a hero not so much because there is a principled fight against corruption.
Recently there has been rims of editorials and gallons of ink instructing all and sundry to accept Thuli Madonsela's Nkandla report. Yet the South African National Editors Forum (SANEF), as far back as June 2001, not only heavily criticised then Public Protector, now Justice Selby Baqwa, for refusing recording and broadcasting equipment into one hearing on the arms deal, but also threatened to take him to court.
The same SANEF family, some 13 years later, not only tells us that the Public Protector must be listened to without question, but they gladly accepted Madonsela's instruction for them not to bring electronic recording devices such as tablets, laptops and cell phones into a "locked up" press briefing on the Nkandla report. Where is the principle here? Again the moral guardians of our constitution were conspicuously silent on this.
Let us listen to Helen Zille in 2008 against the Public Protector Advocate Lawrence Mushwana
"Mushwana's record, and that of his predecessor, Selby Baqwa, encapsulates everything that is wrong with the ANC's policy of deploying party cadres to institutions supposed to check and balance state power. Just like Baleka Mbete's role as both Speaker and ANC National Chairperson, Mushwana's position is a fundamental conflict of interest. Both owe their loyalty to the ANC first and to the Constitution second. They are living examples of Jacob Zuma's contention that "the ANC is even more important than the Constitution." Absolute silence when Zille said all this as it was also the case in the earlier period when Tony Leon viciously attacked Justice Selby Baqwa!"
Yet, today we are told that we must uncritically endorse whatever Thuli Madonsela says as part of respecting our institutions supporting democracy. The DA's cheerleaders in the media see absolutely no double standards or contradiction in this, because for them the rule of law is only when the ANC and government are being criticised. Not so long ago, Zille threatened to take legal action against Madonsela when she gave a provisional report pointing at corruption in the DA's tender on public relations. In fact Zille had this to say about the Public Protector:
"A provisional report, drafted for the Public Protector, into the Western Cape Government's ‘alleged improper procurement of communications services' was leaked to the media a week before the agreed deadline for our response. This in itself is highly irregular, and prejudices our right to rectify what our Senior Counsel, Advocate Geoff Budlender, believes to be material legal errors in the draft report, before the report is finalised. Without casting aspersions on the Public Protector herself, we believe this premature leak prejudices the administration of justice and compromises our rights".
But what is even more breath-taking is the arrogance of Zille and assumption that the Public Protector will correct what she disagrees with:
"I will be making all of these, and other points, to the Public Protector myself when I meet her later this week in order to give her the opportunity to rectify the report before she finalises it under her name".
Indeed Madonsela changed her final report! And there was stunning silence from our self-appointed moral police and advocates of the rule of law when this happened. There was no criticism of Zille for challenging the Public Protector!
Selective criticism or support of our constitutional Institutions on the basis of whether they criticise ANC-led government or not is as dangerous as disrespecting these institutions. It is important to consistently point out that the rule of law is indivisible, whether it is under President Mandela or President Zuma. The surest way of discrediting our institutions of democracy is selective support and morality, which is often opportunistic and unprincipled.
For the media cheerleaders, as long as you are against the ANC you remain a moral and political hero even if you face serious charges in the trade union movement or even irrespective of how many millions of rands you have stolen from SARS. In the 1980s, at the height of apartheid repression, most of the media were apologists of the apartheid regime. In my home town of Dambuza, we derisively referred to the media under apartheid as "Amanga Abelungu". Unfortunately, this still remains the case for sections of our media untransformed today! Akuzona izindaba, Kepha amang'abelungu!
Fortunately our people are not stupid, they can see through all this bankruptcy and hypocrisy, as they will emphatically demonstrate with their vote on 7 May 2014.
All the above was important to point out, as it illustrates the bankruptcy of our opposition and their cheerleaders in the media. Because they have no message of hope for our people, they were hoping that their biggest weapon against the ANC was the Public Protector's report on the security upgrades at the President's homestead.
Despite the fact that this report is not exactly the same as the leaked report, the opposition is trying to milk it as much as possible, even to the point of attempting to elevate Chapter 9 institutions above the executive arm of government. For instance the likes of Richard Calland and Lawson Naidoo are claiming that Madonsela's report is more credible than that of the Security cluster of Ministers, because the Public Protector's Office is a constitutional body, as if the President and the Executive are not prescribed for in Chapter Five of the Constitution. This is a blatant bastardisation of our Constitution, if not outright disinformation and deliberate distortion of facts, and rather rich coming from self-appointed guardians of the rule of law!
Nowhere in both the Ministers' and the Public Protector's report does it say the President's homestead was built by the state. Nor had the President asked for any security upgrades at his House. Nowhere has the President also been found to have misled Parliament. In fact the biggest hole in the Public Protector's report might as well be that there is a serious disjuncture between her findings and the conclusions. That the provision of the security upgrades were inflated is known to all. The nature and extent of this inflation (and corruption) is a matter that is already being investigated by the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) as appointed by the President.
As the SACP we have called upon for a full investigation into possible corruption, not only at Nkandla, but in all of government's contracts and tenders. Such an investigation must equally focus on both public officials and the private sector, especially the construction industry. We wish the opposition could equally call for special parliamentary sittings when private construction companies fleece the state around FIFA World Cup tenders!
In fact some of the opposition parties are so politically bankrupt such that they would long have died a natural death were it not for the fact that they have been living on ideological steroids - uncritical support from sections of South African media; amang'abelungu!
It is for the above and many other reasons that the SACP describes the DA for what it is, a party of white privilege that speaks from both sides of its mouth when it comes to matters of affirmative action, black economic empowerment, and fighting racism. Respectively, the EFF is nothing but a party of tenderpreneurs with serious neo-fascist inclinations. Attempts by all these parties to try and use the Public Protector's report on Nkandla will be exposed for what it is - an electioneering gimmick that has nothing to do with the fight against corruption. The opposition parties have no good story to tell, nothing!
The ANC Lives, ANC Leads!
Cde Blade Nzimande is SACP General Secretary. This article first appeared in the Party's online journal, Umsebenzi Online.
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