Sunday Times: You can do your damnedest, I will not be silenced!
29 July 2019
Yesterday (Sunday, 28 July 2019), the Sunday Times saw it fit to dedicate almost half of its main editorial to attacking and vilifying me. They saw fit to do so in defense of a traitor. Propaganda stories dating back from almost a decade and half ago were once again dusted off and embellished in order to try to discredit and undermine the perfectly legitimate call that I made, on behalf of the Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA), that Mr. Derek Hanekom should be disciplined and expelled from the ANC for having conspired with opposition parties such as the EFF in order to undermine the ANC, and remove an incumbent ANC President. There are no two ways about it. What Hanekom had done was the work of a traitor: Nothing less.
In defense of Mr. Hanekom, the Sunday Times tried to portray me as an unelected loose canon. For the record, the facts are are very different: I am an elected member of the NEC of MKMVA, and the National Spokesperson of MKMVA. Whatever statements I issue on behalf of MKMVA, I do so officially and in that elected capacity.
The Sunday Times may not like it, but I am an elected member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of MKMVA, and there is no denying of that fact. I have never purported to issue media statements in any other capacity, and I have never in the remotest way tried to encroach on the work of the Spokesperson of the ANC, comrade Pule Mabe. Efforts by some in the mainstream media to make me responsible for ANC media statements issued by the Spokesperson of the ANC, when they do not like the contents of those statements, are blatant lies. They disingenuously try to give me powers way beyond what I have, and which I do not aspire to.
As for my employed in the Office of the Secretary General (SGO) of the ANC: I am. employed as a Manger, with a legitimate and legally binding, full-time, employment contract. The Sunday Times complain that I am constantly seen together with the Secretary General of the ANC, comrade Ace Magashule, (“joined by the hip”, they nag). When I am with the Secretary General it is in the course of carrying out my duties, as an employee in his office. I have not heard the same Sunday Times complaining about employees in the offices any of the other National Office Bearers (NOB’s) seen together with their principles, when carrying out their duties. Somehow, this complaint is only reserved for me. Why? Surely, what must be fit for the goose, must be fit for the gander ...