Towards the end of January, we joined an important delegation of South African government, business and civil society leaders at the 2005 Davos, Switzerland, Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

I believe that our national delegation would agree that what distinguished this year's WEF Annual Meeting was its concentrated and sustained focus on the challenge of global poverty. In this context, this year's Davos Meeting was doubly inspiring to us because, for the first time, it succeeded to place the challenge of Africa's renewal and development high on the global agenda.

In its 28 January 2005 edition, the important global newspaper, the 'International Herald Tribune' (IHT), carried a front page article under the headline "In Davos, spotlight turns to Africa: Assembly presses agenda of continent at 'its moment'". Its author, Alan Cowell, wrote:

"After decades languishing as the last item on the global agenda, seemingly helpless to stem its own decline, Africa is poised this year for what the rock-star Bono called 'its moment' - a time when the world will be pressed to provide the money and the will to reverse a continent's slide.

"To reinforce the point, Thursday at the World Economic Forum in (Davos), an American billionaire, a former American President, a British Prime Minister, two African Presidents and Bono himself took to the stage to drum home the point to an assembly of more than 2,000 of the world's rich and powerful people...

" 'The United States needs to move up the table' of aid donors, as listed by the proportion of their overall wealth that they contribute to development aid, Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, said at a news conference. Gates, who has just announced a $750 million gift to help poor children gain access to vaccines, was speaking shortly before he, Bono and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain joined Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and the former US president Bill Clinton at a public session that ranked as one of the heavyweight events (at Davos)."

The well-known US economist, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, participated in another of these public sessions, this one seeking to answer the outstanding questions that relate to 'Funding the War against Poverty' and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Reflecting and setting the mood that prevailed at Davos, Professor Sachs said, "we want to follow through on what we say; people want to be part of the generation that eliminates extreme poverty."

One of the people present at this session was the actress, Sharon Stone. During the discussion, and determined "to follow through on what we say", she stood up and introduced herself. She then said: "This is my first year in Davos. It is new to me and moving to me and I feel like it might really amount to something. And I was particularly moved by President Mkapa [of Tanzania] and his urgent need. People are dying (from malaria) in his country, today. And that's not okay with me, today. So I'd like to offer my help and support, today. I'd like to offer US$ 10,000 to buy [anti-malarial mosquito protecting] bed nets. Would anyone else like to be on a team with me and help offer their support?"

The WEF reported, correctly, that, "a second member of the audience stood up and offered another US$ 50,000. Soon three more stood and joined the commitment. A dozen. Two dozen. Participant after participant took out business cards with figures scribbled on them, and passed them along the aisle to staff."

President Mkapa thanked all these generous contributors and said: "The problem is not that we don't support these funds and want to enlarge the (development) funds, whether a trade tax or a transport tax (as proposed by French President Jacques Chirac). But seeing how countries in the EU can't agree about a common agricultural policy (to remove agricultural subsidies), I find it difficult to think they will agree on a common (development) fund very soon. We already have a mechanism for fighting the war on poverty [in the Overseas Development Assistance target of 0.7% GDP]. So why can't we put our money where our mouth is?"

The WEF reported that "minutes later, dozens of participants rose to the occasion and, spontaneously, did exactly that."

In his IHT article, Alan Cowell said: "For as long as it has been in decline, of course, much of Africa has been the object of earnest debate and hand-wringing, even as other regions of the world once known for their poverty struggled to gain niches in the global economy. The themes of poverty and disease have changed little, except to worsen."

He then quoted what British Prime Minister Tony Blair had said in a plenary address at Davos. The Prime Minister said: "If what was happening in Africa happened in any other part of the world there would be such a scandal and clamour. Africa is the one continent that has been going back over the last 30 years."

Without exception, the South African delegation was greatly moved that at last the important global decision makers who gather at Davos every year were, for the first time at this Forum, paying this kind of attention to the welfare of the peoples of Africa.

In part, our response was informed by the fact that the Davos participants were addressing exactly the same global and African challenge of poverty and underdevelopment we have sought to confront within our own country during our First Decade of Liberation, responding to its national manifestation in our country. What they said also coincided precisely with our own determination as a country and people to do everything we can to contribute to our continent's renaissance.

Fortunately, our own movement, the ANC, has always understood its obligations to the masses of our people who were deliberately and systematically impoverished by colonialism and apartheid. The democratic victory of 1994 gave us the possibility to confront this legacy of domestic apartheid.

Davos 2005 communicated the message of hope that, at last, and certainly as this relates to Africa, the world progressive movement and people of goodwill, have understood their obligations to the African masses who continue to suffer as a result of the legacy of global apartheid.

It goes without saying that it will take a considerable period of time as well as enormous resources to eradicate this global legacy, in much the same way as it will take time and enormous resources for us to eradicate the legacy of domestic apartheid. The excellent news is that our domestic experience tells the positive story that given the will to act, as demanded by Ben Mkapa, Bono, Jeffrey Sachs and Sharon Stone, it is possible gradually to overcome the legacy of global apartheid in terms of the distribution of wealth and income.

The Bureau of Market Research (BMR) of the University of South Africa has just published an enlightening Report entitled "National Personal Income of South Africans by Population Group, Income Group, Life Stage and Life Plane 1960-2007." The Report was prepared and compiled by Professor Helgard de J van Wyk.

The BMR Report says: "In South Africa horizontal segmentation of personal and personal disposable income has been by population group only for many years. Although the boundaries between population groups in terms of expenditure patterns and other socioeconomic characteristics are becoming increasingly blurred, they still remain an important segmentation tool, not only for marketers, but also for government and sociologists."

The Report proceeds to cite a 2003 statement made by Professor JH Martins of the BMR that: "The classification by population group is based on economic and demographic characteristics, which should not be regarded as primarily colour-depicting characteristics but rather as characteristics distinguishing different expenditure patterns. For a long time to come, demographic as well as economic analyses will have need of this differentiation to facilitate planning by decision makers."

The simple point made by Professors Martins and van Wyk is that so deeply entrenched is the legacy of colonialism and apartheid in our country that "for a long time to come", to be of any analytical use and to reflect reality, our national income and expenditure patterns will have to be categorised according to our "population groups".

Some time ago, to the immense chagrin of some in our country, we made exactly the same point when we described our population as being divided into "two nations". Prime Minister Blair made the same point relating to the place of Africans in the world, when he said that had the tragedy of escalating African poverty similarly affected other areas of the world, there would have been much "scandal and clamour".

Quite correctly and rationally with regard to our development programmes during our First Decade of Democracy, we ignored those who are intent on forcing us to deny the "horizontal segmentation of personal and personal disposable income by population group" analysed by Professors Martins and van Wyk, and which they use as a critical analytical tool.

We did not take this position to "reracialise" our society, as our opponents constantly argue. We proceeded in this manner precisely because we would never have addressed the legacy of domestic apartheid if we pretended that it does not exist. Davos 2005 would not have made the effort to discuss what needs to be done to confront global apartheid if its eminent participants had pretended that it does not exist.

The January 2005 Media Release announcing the publication of the BMR Report says:

"In 2001, 4,1 million out of 11,2 million households in South Africa lived on an income of R9,600 and less per year. This decreased to 3,6 million households in 2004, even after taking the negative effect of price increases on spending into account. On the other hand, the number of households receiving a real income of R153,601 and more per annum rose from 721 000 in 1998 to more than 1,2 million in 2004.

"The number of white households in the lowest income group increased by 30% to 182,000 from 1998 to 2004, while African households in this category decreased by 16% to 3,1 million. The number of African households in the high-middle and high income groups increased by 368% to 440,000 between 1998 and 2004. White households in the same category increased by 16% to 642,000...

"Calculations per income group showed that, in 2003, the top 20% of households received almost 65% of the income, indicating the skewness of the distribution of income in South Africa. Further analysis showed that 89,8% of households in the lowest income group were African households in 2001. For the high income group, the percentages were 61,6% for Whites and 29,5% for Africans."

These figures tell the greatly encouraging and immensely challenging story that:

• even where we use only income as a measure of wellbeing, excluding "the social wage", we have succeeded to reduce the aggregate levels of poverty;
• there has been an expansion of "the middle class", with Africans recording the highest growth rate, resulting in the reduction of racial disparities within this "class";
• there has been a similar tendency towards equalisation of incomes between blacks and whites who belong to the lowest income group;
• nevertheless, the absolute inherited racial disparities persist, despite the relative reduction of these disparities, as reflected in the high income group figures showing that this group is 61,6% white and 29,5% african; and,
• the absolute "class" disparities also continue to persist, with the top 20% of households receiving almost 65% of the national income.

Professor van Wyk has given us information we need and must use, further to intensify our struggle to build the caring, egalitarian, non-racial, non-sexist, and prosperous society towards which we aspire. This information tells us what our "people's contract" must be about. It gives us the assurance that while our struggle must continue, victory is certain.

At Davos, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said it was now necessary to "help developing nations more than ever before...Promises to raise funding (for Africa and the developing countries) have been hot air and speculation so far. We want to go into implementation and we are ready to pay for it."

At Davos, French President Jacques Chirac said: "The divide between rich and poor has widened to a frightening degree. This is a situation fraught with danger. It is morally unacceptable. Development is both the greatest challenge and the most urgent issue of our time. It is a matter of ethics. For the open economic system and humanist civilisation that we share, it is also the best guarantee and the best investment in the future."

At Davos, our own Kumi Naidoo, Secretary-General and Chief Executive Officer, Civicus-World Alliance for Citizen Participation, said: "The EU subsidises every cow to the tune of US$3 a day, so that most of the world's people are worse off than European cows."

Mahfuz Anam, Editor and Publisher of 'The Daily Star' in Bangladesh, who served on the same panel as Kumi Naidoo, supported this, as well as what President Mkapa had said, by stating that, "Equitable globalisation is a question of market access for developing countries and ending subsidies in developed countries. Are market-based societies really practising at home what they preach to the world? Now that developing countries are in a position to compete, it seems the goal posts have been moved!"

In our country, as in the rest of the world, there is a continuing struggle to decide what belongs to the contemporary human agenda. The global mass media plays an important role in this regard. But we would urge that we pay particular attention to the messages communicated by such honest intellectuals as Professors Martins and van Wyk, regardless of the attention the media pays or does not pay to their work.

During Davos 2004, Eason Jordan, Chief News Executive, CNN News Group, USA, said news organisations face difficult decisions about which stories to cover. He said, "We don't do everything right. We make mistakes." He said that no matter what story a news organisation covers, its bias is reflected in its choice and in the language it uses. As such, he said he finds objectivity and impartiality to be outdated, tired terms.

At Davos, Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator 'Financial Times', United Kingdom, noted that "we live in an extraordinarily unequal world in which on the average, relative incomes between people who live in rich countries and poor countries are shockingly different".

Davos 2005 and Professor van Wyk have made the firm statement that we must address this shocking difference. This must continue to occupy the centre stage in the continuing national and international struggle of our movement as we begin our Second Decade of Liberation.

On 17 January this year, in Cape Town, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, proposed bold steps to advance the African renewal project. This was at a meeting of the "Africa Commission" hosted by our Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel, which was attended by 17 Finance Ministers, AU representatives, members of the NEPAD Steering Committee, the African Development Bank and others. Gordon Brown said:

"When people say what we propose is too ambitious, unrealistic, a distant and utopian dream, let the Commission for Africa remind the doubters:

• they first dismissed civil rights (in the US) as the work of dreamers;
• they first wrote off the Marshall Plan as a distant utopia;
• they first ridiculed debt write off as economically illiterate and impossible;
• and let us also remember here in Cape Town they first said those who fought against apartheid here in South Africa were violating rights when we all know they were righting wrongs...

"And so let us tell the world about our shared vision of globalisation in 2015 (the target year for the accomplishment of the MDGs)...one moral universe where progress is not just one individual or even just one or two countries doing well, but all of us advancing together, and where by the strong helping the weak it makes us all stronger."

As a people, we must and will do everything we can to eradicate the domestic, African and global legacy of apartheid as quickly as possible, helping to create one moral universe.

It portends a new and inspiring dawn that the eminent citizens of the world who were at Davos 2005 seem to agree that they too want to be "part of the generation that eliminates extreme poverty" in Africa and the world.

16 Days of Activism

Campaign sets the stage for even greater effort in 2005

The 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children is now an annual campaign in South Africa, deepening and broadening awareness of gender-based violence and child abuse with each successive year.

But how effective is the campaign? A review of the achievements, experiences and lessons from the 2004 campaign, held - as it is each year - from 25 November to 10 December, shows that the progress made in broadening participation and awareness needs to be consolidated into sustained social action.

The 16 Days of Activism campaign is an annual, UN-endorsed campaign, designed to highlight issues relating to gender abuse and to promote proactive responses. South Africa, which started participating in the international campaign in 1996, also uses the 16 Days to generate greater awareness around violence against children, especially the girl child.

Each year has seen increased support for and greater participation in its events by a wide range of role-players. Participation in the campaign has increased steadily, but whether the campaign results in the necessary change in attitudes and behaviour remains open to question.

The campaign tried to reinforce the message that the fight against gender-based and child-directed violence is not just a 16-day process; it must be a year-round effort. Converting that message into actual, year-round effort and action remains a challenge.

The theme for the 2004 campaign, 'Unite Against Woman and Child Abuse', called on all South Africans to participate in the campaign in any one of the nearly four hundred events that took place in rural and urban communities across the country.

The interactive element of the campaign was a postcard pledge campaign, run by government in conjunction with the Post Office, Transnet, Eskom and several private sector companies. Postcards were distributed countrywide for people to sign and return to the Johannesburg Metro Civic Centre where they were pasted on a huge 'Wall of Solidarity'. Over 420,000 non-violence postcard pledges were received from the public, raising R300,000 for NGOs and CBOs that work with victims and survivors of violence.

In the run-up to the campaign several sectors were engaged to develop a programme of action for the campaign, including faith-based organisations, business organisations, traditional leaders, media institutions, government departments and NGOs.

A partnership between government, several NGOs, business and the Johannesburg Metro produced the Cyber Dialogues, an interactive lunchtime chat-room between the public and specialists. The dialogues made use of interactive technologies to encourage interaction among communities from different parts of the country. The campaign was given a high-profile at various sporting events, including the Sun City Million Dollar Golf Tournament and games of Kaizer Chiefs and Ajax Cape Town.

The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) used a variety of innovative mechanisms to raise awareness, weaving, for example, violence-related issues into soap opera story-lines. Several feature and magazine programmes engaged in debate on the issue of woman and child abuse with specialist guests. News coverage of programme events was extensive. Radio support from all of the SABC's regional and national radio stations was significant and a good spread was achieved in terms of language-group coverage.

The electronic media, in particular television, was commended by the Media Monitoring Project (MMP) for having taken the lead in covering issues related to gender-based and child-directed violence during the 16-day campaign period. While the MMP commended the media's efforts to highlight the campaign and related issues, it indicated a significant decline in the levels of reportage after the campaign's end.

An important lesson from the 2004 campaign is that a one-size-fits-all approach to campaign messaging is not effective. Different sectors and groups respond differently to messaging and the diversity of the South African community poses significant challenges in this regard.

A question that remains unanswered is how to convert the considerable amounts of energy, resources and enthusiasm invested by all role-players into a measurable change in attitude and behaviour. Improved engagement of the youth is also essential and broader participation by the faith-based organisations should be encouraged.

Increasing participation by business and the NGO sector is an encouraging indicator of the campaign's ability to achieve greater penetration of its messages into civil society.

The 16 Days of Activism campaign recognises that women's rights are human rights and that our society will never truly be free until we have achieved the full emancipation of women. There is a growing understanding and appreciation that the campaign forms a small part of government's overall transformation agenda and that it a process that will take considerable time and much effort.

The 2004 campaign saw the formation of new partnerships. Efforts to canvass new partners in new sectors need to get underway early in 2005 with a view to expanding the campaign's reach and penetration.

The Sociology of the Public Discourse in Democratic South Africa / Part IV

All out war against the scarecrows

We had planned this week to pursue the important issue raised by Raymond Suttner concerning "debating racism in post-apartheid South Africa". Given our racist past and its continuing impact on the present, it would be most strange if the issue of debating racism was not itself a contentious matter and an important part of the public discourse, which it is.

We have however decided to reserve our discussion of this issue to a later date. This is because, fortunately, there has been some public response to our previous articles on the sociology of the public discourse. We consider this very healthy because we are publishing this series precisely to add to the continuing public debate of the important issues facing our country.

We therefore decided that this week we should comment on the public response to our series, rather than give the wrong impression that we have chosen to ignore this response. In particular we will deal with the comments made by Willem Jordaan in his article published in the Die Burger edition of 26 January, entitled "SA politics being hamstrung by pointless refrain" (our translation).

We focus on this article because we believe it is representative of a particular school of thought and methodology that seem to be among the constants that characterise the national public discourse.

By now we have learnt the important lesson that ANC rebuttals of comments made by individual South Africans are very readily characterised as intimidating and anti-democratic interventions to silence such individuals. We must therefore emphasise the point that we genuinely appreciate the fact that Willem Jordaan wrote the article he did, as well as others.

We would be very pleased if he continued to engage and contest the ANC views expressed in ANC TODAY and anywhere else. We hope that he will understand that if we differ with him, in no way will that indicate that we want to shut him down. We hold no predetermined position that our views are necessarily correct and his necessarily wrong, and therefore that we have nothing to learn from him.

We will begin by identifying some of the specific points made by Jordaan with which we differ.

In this column, Jordaan says "most of the anonymous articles appearing weekly in ANC TODAY are focusing on who has the right to take part in political debate, and who does not."

He also says, "The 'black and white elites' are being accused of trying to hijack the political debate by forcing their own agendas onto the government."

He asserts that as opposed to this, "the ANC is positioning the government, portraying it as the prophet of 'true reality', on the strength of the majority of South Africans having voted for it."

He then asks a number of questions based on the observation that "it is not clear to whom the ANC is referring when it talks of 'the black and white elite'...Is the ANC saying that all those who disagree with the government share the same political ideology."

However it soon becomes obvious that these are merely rhetorical questions. He writes that, "what is in fact important, is that vagaries like these are making the political debate sterile, because it denies the diversity of the input from the opposition, trade unions, interest groups, political observers and those who now and again may find themselves being critical of government policy.

"To lump all political opponents together is an old strategy that will always be part of politics. But it becomes a major problem when it starts to dominate the national debate."

Jordaan then proceeds to indicate the issues he believes should be debated. These include job creation, fighting AIDS, building more houses and fighting corruption. He argues that "unfortunately, these and other questions are seldom part of the political debate nowadays..."

He then argues that "the present (electoral) system is curtailing Parliament's role of monitor", leading to the "frustration" of many government and opposition MPs. In addition, this leads to the absence of debate on the issues he identified.

In turn, and also because "the system of proportional representation requires a servile sycophancy to political bosses, rather than a direct responsibility to constituencies", "MPs on both sides of the political debate who seek practical solutions to national issues, are dragged into pointless mudslinging".

He then asserts that these MPs want "the reinstatement of the hope of exploring new possibilities along the road of the reasonable word", rather than "the entrenchment of mutual mistrust".

He says that it is only when this is done that one hundred flowers will bloom, and one hundred schools of thought contend, which President Mbeki said is his wish. In other words, genuinely free and healthy debate will only take place in our country if the public discourse is defined by certain features.

It must be confined to some defined issues. It must focus on "seeking practical solutions to (the defined) national issues". It should blur the partisan political differences among the MPs who are drawn from different political parties and formations.

To achieve this, the MPs must be liberated from their "sycophantic" responsibility to their political parties and "party bosses". Rather, they must be accountable only or mainly to defined and localised geographic constituencies.

We hope that this summary does not constitute a misrepresentation of Jordaan's views as expressed in his article, or, inadvertently, an unfair interpretation that "puts words in his mouth". For our part, we are convinced that it accurately reflects what Jordaan wrote. It contains the important issues to which we will now respond.

Jordaan's article contains patently false allegations about the positions of the ANC. There is absolutely nothing that the ANC has said or done that Jordaan can cite to substantiate these allegations. The question must therefore arise as to why Willem Jordaan honestly thinks, as he presumably does, that what he tells his readers are the views of the ANC are, in fact, the views of the ANC!

Nowhere have we suggested in this series that there are some who have the right to take part in political debate, and others who do not. Indeed the very call made the President - let a hundred schools of thought contend! -constitutes a direct invitation to everybody to join the national debate.

It is true that in his response to Archbishop Tutu's Mandela Lecture, the President questioned the Archbishop's ability accurately to reflect on internal ANC processes. At no point did the President suggest that, because of this, the Archbishop had no right to comment on published ANC decisions or any other element of our national politics.

Again, at no point has the ANC or this series suggested that all those who disagree with the government share the same political ideology. The fact of the matter however is that many of those who disagree with the government share common views about a whole range of issues relating both to the government and the ANC.

This was illustrated by the response of the government's opponents and others to Archbishop Tutu's Mandela Lecture. Among those who sided with the Archbishop were "the opposition, trade unions, interest groups, political observers" and others mentioned by Jordaan.

We have no reason to believe that Jordaan or anybody else will question this obvious fact. Whether these government opponents and others share the same view about the range of issues to which we have referred because they belong to "the same political ideology" is something we can discuss. Certainly we would never have made an assertion about anybody's political ideology without trying to substantiate it.

Quite incorrectly and with no justification whatsoever, Willem Jordaan says the ANC seeks to portray our government "as the prophet of 'true reality', on the strength of the majority of South Africans having voted for it".

These are two different matters. We have never argued that because our government enjoys the support of the overwhelming majority of our population, as confirmed by last year's elections, it is such a "prophet of true reality".

What President Mbeki argued in his response to the Archbishop was that assessments of the success or otherwise of our government's policies and programmes should be based on a factual reflection of our "true reality" and not just a mere repetition of mistaken "conventional wisdom" or unfounded "perceptions".

Certainly the government has to base its actions on the actual realities our country faces. It must respect and respond to objective reality. This does not make the government a unique "prophet of true reality", as opposed to others who might be its opponents.

Contrary to what Jordaan said, we have not accused "the elite" of hijacking anything. In Part II of this series, we cited and agreed with the comment made by Mteto Nyati that "In South Africa the (political and ideological) fight is really about who sets the national agenda". This is a statement of fact about a perfectly normal process in any country, through which different schools of thought do their best to ensure that their particular vision prevails.

All political parties in our country do everything they can to persuade the people to agree that what they stand for constitutes the best vision for the realisation of the people's hopes for a better life. To one degree or another, these political parties are supported by parts of the media, sections of the intelligentsia, business, civil society and others.

All this is par for the course in all democratic societies, such as ours. What is also par for the course is that, necessarily, the political organisations and their supporters will present their views as benign interventions made in the interest of "the nation", stripped of the partisan interests that each political formation necessarily pursues in favour of the constituency and ideological tendency it represents.

Our opponents work as hard as they can to set the national agenda by persuading the people that what they stand for is right for the nation, whereas what we stand for is bad for the nation. Were they to succeed, eithe r the ANC would be defeated at the next election, or the ANC would have to change its policies to "hijack" the views of its opponents, given that these had now become the dominant national consensus.

The "elite" is doing everything it can to convince the nation about the correctness of its views, to oblige the government to accept these views as its own. It also directly contests the positions of the ANC and the government on a whole range of issues, believing that it can defeat them, once more prevailing on the ANC and the government to abandon their policy and programmatic positions in favour of those propagated by the "elite".

All this is perfectly natural and normal in a democracy. The attempt to deny that the "elite" is trying to set the national agenda is dishonest. To present our description of a natural and normal process as an allegation that we are accusing our opponents of "hijacking" and "forcing their own agendas onto the government" constitutes part of the effort to attach a negative label to our movement and government, to shroud the perfectly legitimate but partisan efforts of our adversaries in a cloak of disinterested and noble service to the people!

Our movement openly pursues its own partisan course. Part of its agenda seeks to address the related and interdependent issues of national reconciliation and social transformation. In this regard, and as Mteto Nyati said, "the black majority government believes that is has a mandate to set the country's priorities".

This it will continue to do, as will the ANC MPs, all of them respecting the mandate they and their movement received from the overwhelming majority of our people. We will continue to set these priorities, and publicly and vigorously defend them in open and unfettered debate, loyal to the popular mandate we have received.

We will do this fully cognisant of the fact that during last year's free and fair elections, deliberately the people did not give our adversaries the mandate to set the country's priorities. At the same time, we will continue to respect their democratic right to do what they can to set the national agenda, with no attempt whatsoever to silence their voice.

Everything we have said so far points to the reality that as he pretended to report on what the ANC has been saying, Jordaan was erecting scarecrows, which would pose as ANC views, and which he could then quite easily knock down.

We mention this because it is one of the devices that is used quite regularly in the political and ideological struggle in our country and therefore forms part of the sociology of the public discourse.

A variant of this device is the false attribution to the ANC of such negatives as that we categorise our critics as "unpatriotic enemies", that we are behaving as though we are "under siege", and that we suffer from "psychological insecurity" and "paranoia". The dog having been given a bad name, it becomes easy to hang it.

Jordaan and others further contribute to this negative image-building by charging that when we defend ourselves against our detractors, we are "entrenching mutual mistrust", undermining the national spirit of "hope", blocking the search for national consensus with regard to finding "practical solutions to national issues", and dragging people "into pointless mudslinging".

The reality however is that we did not start the "mudslinging". Mud was thrown at us with accusations that among other things, we are suppressing democratic debate inside and outside the ANC.

It was said that we are doing nothing about mass poverty, focusing on the enrichment of a few under the guise of black empowerment. We were accused that we have used our electoral system to turn our MPs into mercenaries who have betrayed their intellectual integrity in favour of parliamentary salaries.

Jordaan continues to throw mud at us with regard to the latter. He accuses MPs of "servile sycophancy (towards) party bosses", strangely attributing this to "proportional representation". And undoubtedly if we respond to this insult, we will be accused of "mudslinging"!

Like others among our adversaries, Jordaan has deliberately avoided addressing the issues our movement has raised in this series and elsewhere. Rather than directly contesting these issues, including the fact that the political and ideological debate is precisely about setting the national agenda, he tries to draw us into a false contest based on an agenda based on fabricated ANC positions.

Our adversaries still have to answer the question - when will they engage the issues we are raising, rather than resort to the fruitless exercises of manufacturing scarecrows and constructing meaningless psychological profiles of our movement and President! Or is it the case that they cannot withstand the heat of the fire they started!

To be continued...

What the media says

The Economist responds

EDITOR'S NOTE: In the previous edition of ANC Today we published an article responding to a 'special report' that had appeared in The Economist the week before. We indicated our readiness to publish any response The Economist might wish to make to the article. The editor of The Economist, Bill Emmott, has provided a response, which we publish below in full.

In its online edition of 28 January, ANC Today published an article ("Economical with the truth") that criticised The Economist's coverage of South Africa, and in particular our recent profile of President Thabo Mbeki (Special report, 22 January). You offered us a chance to respond, for which we are grateful.

You suggest that The Economist has a "contemptuous attitude towards [South Africa's] national aspirations". We do not. Nor do we harbour any special hostility towards President Mbeki. We often praise his macroeconomic policies, and recently suggested, in an editorial, that his efforts at peacemaking in Africa made him worthy of consideration for a Nobel Prize.

We try to analyse South African politics, and the actions of its president, in the same fair but sceptical manner that we apply to any other country. If we consider a policy unwise, we say so clearly and forcefully. It would be a disservice to our readers if we did not, and ultimately to South Africa, since free and robust debate is vital to the health of any democracy.

You claim that our report was full of errors, but you appear to have found only points that are debatable. We say, for example, that President Mbeki "clashed" with Archbishop Tutu over the final report of the truth commission. You say that on the contrary, he merely "contested" its findings. These are two different ways of describing the same set of facts.

You also claim, outrageously, that our correspondent fabricated quotations by prominent South Africans. That is untrue, and would be a gross violation of The Economist's editorial principles. All the quotes in the piece are accurate, though we understand that two of the interviewees were displeased by the context in which their words appeared.

To answer some of your other points:

You say that President Mbeki has never lobbied for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. In fact, he said in September last year that South Africa wants such a seat.

You describe as an "unadulterated fabrication" our statement that President Mbeki had the police investigate Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale and Mathews Phosa for a "plot" against him in April 2001. But such an investigation was indeed ordered by his security minister, Steve Tshwete, and it is hard to imagine that he could have taken such an extraordinary decision without his boss's approval. President Mbeki himself spoke about a conspiracy.

You say that President Mbeki has responded to every question he has been asked about Zimbabwe. In fact foreign journalists are discouraged from asking questions about Zimbabwe, and have been told by press officers, in private, that President Mbeki's dislike of such questions is one reason why he refuses to talk to foreign journalists regularly.

Finally, on the subject of AIDS, President Mbeki has indeed cast doubt on the idea that a virus (HIV) can cause a syndrome (AIDS). He has also questioned the usefulness (and safety) of antiretroviral drugs. We recognise (and have reported) that South Africa's anti-AIDS policies have improved in the past year or two, but given the scale of the epidemic, we are not alone in believing that President Mbeki could offer firmer leadership in fighting it.

We believe that our profile of President Mbeki presented a fair summary of his merits and flaws as the leader of what we acknowledged to be "Africa's most successful democracy".

Yours truly,
Bill Emmott
Editor
The Economist
25 St James's St
London

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