MEDIA STATEMENT BY CARL NIEHAUS CONCERNING THE WRONG AND UNNECESSARY CONTROVERSY THAT HAD DELIBERATELY BEEN CREATED CONCERNING HIS SPEECH AT THE LAND IMBOZO
Date: Friday, 6 July 2018
Never shoot from the hip, nor “erupt like a volcano", to use the colourful imagery that comrade Fikile Mbalula is so partial to... In my fourty years as a veteran of the ANC, and many years of media experience, I have learnt not to allow journalists with their own anti- ANC agendas to excite me, and work me up with miss-representations and deliberately incomplete and selective quotes in order to pitch me against a fellow comrade. A golden rule is to give yourself enough time, and respect yourself and your fellow comrade enough, to acquaint yourself fully with what he or she said before you comment. In doing so one can avoid becoming an inadvertent tool of division and destruction in our beloved Movement.
This is the comradely advice that I would like to give to my younger brother in the struggle, comrade Fikile Mbalula. I do so respecting him as my leader by virtue of his membership of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC, and acknowledging him as a talented, though somewhat volatile, member of the ANC leadership collective. If comrade Mbalula had followed this advise, and listened to my full speech at the Imbizo that his Majesty King Zwelithini held on Wednesday the 4th of July 2018 at Ulundi, he would not have allowed himself to be excited and mislead by journalists of the mainstream media who are in the employ of White Monopoly Capital, into launching an entirely unwarranted attack on me.
For the enlightenment and information of comrade Mbalula, and the journalists who carried his attack on me, they can follow the following link to listen to the full version of the short speech that I made at the Imbizo. They will note that I have not claimed to speak with a mandate on behalf of the ANC or MKMVA.
Nor did I attack/ criticise the ANC's position concerning the Ingonyama Trust. In fact I was at pains to clarify that the ANC has not taken any formal position with regards to the Inkonyama Trust, nor on the recommendations of the High Level Panel on the Assessment of Key Legislation and the Acceleration of Fundamental Change. This I did because as the Imbizo progressed it became clear to me that a very wrong and highly damaging perception was gaining ground that the ANC was negatively disposed to the Ingonyama Trust, and had accepted the recommendations of the High Level Panel - neither of which are correct.