View of the Editor
Last week we published a letter from ANC President Thabo Mbeki in which he challenged the serious accusation made by the Sunday Times, the DA, SACP and COSATU that leaders of our movement had positioned themselves and abused their positions in government to enrich themselves.
As they were entitled to, the Sunday Times, the SACP and COSATU have responded to the President's letter, naturally seeking to defend themselves. In turn, our movement issued a public statement responding particularly to COSATU's statement on the President's letter. Below follow further observations we would like to make on this important issue.
The first point we would like to make is that, proceeding from an entirely false basis, the Sunday Times, the DA, SACP and COSATU decided to mount a determined attack against leaders of the ANC and the ANC itself, accusing us of corrupt practice.
The second point is that the President's Letter sought to respond to this attack. If we are now faced with a public controversy, which some, for various reasons, might find uncomfortable, these must understand that the ANC did not start the controversy.
The third point, mentioned in the President's letter, is that even our allies, the SACP and COSATU, made absolutely no effort to contact us to check the veracity of the allegations originally made by the Sunday Times, which consciously and deliberately sought to project some of our leaders, and the ANC as a whole, as a corruptive force deeply embedded in our body politic.
The fourth point is that our movement, from the President downwards, will consistently and with no apology to anybody, defend itself against all attacks by its opponents, who might seek to misrepresent its positions, question its integrity, and alienate it from the masses of our people, which is what the Sunday Times, the DA, SACP and COSATU tried to do at the end of November concerning the Gautrain.
The fifth point is that whatever we might say in this regard, and any other matter in future, including such interventions as our President might make, is not intended to silence anybody. The principle must apply to everybody, without exception, that those who elect to enter into the furnace of robust debate, must not cry foul when they can no longer stand the heat.
We will not accept the thesis that some, as an expression of the vibrancy of our democracy, are perfectly entitled to attack the ANC and the government, while the ANC and the government, again supposedly as an expression of the vibrancy of our democracy, have a duty to shut up, in the face of a concerted attack.
The sixth point is that in the event that a robust debate arises affecting any issue, those involved must not expect that they can unilaterally lay down rules prescribing what constitutes legitimate argument, principally to limit the possibility for the ANC and the government to defend themselves.
The seventh point we would like to make is that, regardless of what others may do, in all instances we will do our best always to respect the truth, refusing to resort to falsehoods and demagogy to promote the goals of the national democratic revolution.
With regard to this seventh point, relating to the absolute imperative to respect the truth, and in the context of the matters at issue, we would like the Sunday Times, the DA, SACP and COSATU to answer a simple and specific question.
This simple and specific question is - can this grouping, either individually or collectively, cite one instance over the twelve-and-a-half years since our liberation, when ANC leaders and cadres, from the Presidents and Deputy Presidents, downwards through the Ministers, Deputy Ministers and Premiers, to the Directors General, abused their positions in government to enrich themselves?
To make it easy for our accusers, we ask them to cite only one instance, and no more. We ask this important question because all the members of the group that launched a hostile offensive against the ANC at the end of November, charging us with corruption, argued that, to use Tony Leon's words, the ANC is affected by "the taint and the whiff of corruption surrounding everything".
The Sunday Times said: "The Gautrain saga comes amid criticism that large government tenders mainly benefit a well-connected elite." COSATU said: "worryingly growing numbers of ANC and government leaders are in the grip of a culture of personal self-enrichment." The SACP said: "The SACP wishes to strongly condemn this as the worst expression of what we have consistently warned against, parasitic capitalism." The DA said that "part of President Thabo Mbeki's legacy would be the speed with which corruption was allowed to flourish, because of the collapse of the boundaries between the ANC and the state".
We believe we are right to expect that our accusers, having made the serious accusations reported in the preceding paragraph, will have the information at their fingertips showing how the echelon of the ANC leadership cadre in the categories we have mentioned, has acted in a manner that reflects that "worryingly growing numbers of ANC and government leaders are in the grip of a culture of personal self-enrichment".
In this context we must mention that none of our accusers, including and particularly our allies, the SACP and COSATU, have, in the last twelve-and-a-half years, ever approached the ANC to inform us of any instance of abuse of power by any ANC leader or leaders for personal self-enrichment, urging us to act against the individuals they would have identified.
Fortunately, the controversy that has arisen around the Gautrain project provides our Allies with an opportunity to correct this obviously unintended shortcoming. In a spirit of "glasnost" - transparency - and accountability to the people, we would accept that as our accusers provide us with the information we request, they should also make this information generally available to the South African public.
The point at issue is that our accusers allege such widespread and endemic corruption perpetrated by ANC leaders, that this collective of accusers makes bold to assert that the cancer of corruption can justly be characterised as "a legacy" of the years of freedom, during which the ANC, especially under the leadership of President Mbeki, went on the rampage corruptly to enrich its "elite".
It must surely be that this tendency has become so pervasive, and obviously visible even to the naked eye, that COSATU felt compelled to urge that, "it was important for the ANC to maintain the high standards of governance it had brought with it and not sink to the corruption levels prevalent during the apartheid era."
With regard to all the foregoing, and to repeat, we request that our accusers, severally or collectively, should supply the information about the layer of leadership we have mentioned, which led them to proclaim loudly and publicly, that the ANC has transformed itself into a machinery of corruption.
As editor of this ANC journal, I undertake to publish the evidence they will provide in full, at all costs avoiding any editorial intervention that might seek to change in any way the information that our accusers will provide, to substantiate the charge they have laid at our feet, that we are corrupt.
With regard to the matter originally raised by the Sunday Times, concerning the personal enrichment of particular leaders of the ANC serving in our system of governance, through the Gautrain project, our accusers will have to respond to the specific facts presented in the President's letter.
They have to present specific information to show that the President was wrong in his understanding of the facts relevant to this matter, and not hide behind many words that have no meaning in this regard. To resolve this particular debate, all that is required is the public presentation of the relevant facts.
The editor of the Sunday Times, Mondli Makhanya, has made the absurd assertion that the President's message conveyed in his letter was - "Thou shalt not question that upon which I have put my stamp of approval."
Makhanya knows very well that the President made no such demand, and has never issued any "edict". I know that the President would be very willing to accept that he was wrong, if Makhanya provides facts contrary to those stated in the President's letter.
Our President belongs to, and has grown up in a movement that has always sought to take its decisions by consensus, achieved through open discussion within its ranks. This practice was sustained even during the 30-year period of our illegality, from 1960 to 1990.
That process of discussion has always assumed that our leaders have as much a right to participate in any debate as any other member of our movement. The only time that our leaders issue what Makhanya describes as "edicts" is only when they announce the consensus decisions arrived at through open democratic discussion.
Consistent with this, the President and other leaders of our movement will participate in the national debate on any and all issues of importance to the future of our country, always respecting the truth as they see it. People holding responsible positions, such as the editor of the Sunday Times, are at perfect liberty to contest any view advanced by our leadership and movement, with absolutely no fear that we will misuse state power to punish those who differ with us.
Makhanya has absolutely no basis to assert that when our President wrote a letter to oppose an unadulterated fabrication propagated by the Sunday Times, which alleged corrupt practice, he was issuing what amounts to a Biblical Commandment. Rhetorical flourish does not absolve Makhanya from the obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
It is perfectly clear to me that, like others, Makhanya believes that he has a right to write and say anything he likes about the ANC and our government. He, like others, entertains the very strange and ridiculous belief that the ANC and our government, especially the President of the ANC and the Republic, have no right to speak out in defence of the ANC and the government. Obviously Makhanya believes that he can silence the President and thus exclude him from the national debate by characterising his intervention as "bullying", or some such unacceptable behaviour.
The President has never demanded obedience to himself. He has never asked that anybody should "just shut up" about anything. He has never expected or demanded that every African should have sufficient pride in himself or herself to repudiate the deeply insulting allegation that our cultures condition African men to treat the rape of women as normal behaviour. In this regard he has understood that there might be some among us who have accepted how they are defined by others.
Neither has he done anything that was intended to compromise the independence of the judiciary or the press, contrary to the achievement of these objectives in our democracy, for which members and supporters of the ANC sacrificed their lives.
The fact might have escaped Makhanya's attention that our President was part of the ANC leadership that was responsible for the drafting and adoption of our Constitution that entrenches the independence of the judiciary and the media. If Makhanya does not know this, we would like to inform him that this Constitution could never have been adopted without, at least, the concurrence of the ANC.
And with regard to the communication of ANC and government policies to the masses of our people, and the interaction of both the ANC and government with these masses, which includes the duty and the exercise of the right of the people to "talk back", it does seem that Makhanya does not live in South Africa.
His absence from our midst, wherever he may be as a result, has obviously deprived him of the knowledge that our President, our government in all its spheres and the ANC, occupy the front ranks, globally, in terms of sustained, systematic and systemic interaction with the electorate, during which process the people speak out freely and without limitation, always in the presence of the mass media.
Any President of the ANC, and any ANC President of the Republic, whoever that may be, including President Mbeki, will always speak out to defend the ANC and any government led by the ANC. Makhanya might think that this constitutes "bullying". It will never be our fault that the likes of Makhanya find it difficult to respond to the rational arguments of our leaders and our movement.
It will not be difficult for the people to see through the fig leaves people like Makhanya construct to hide their bankruptcy when they resort to unfounded allegations such as "bullying", as they fail to present cogent counter-arguments, which prove that our movement is wrong in the positions it takes.
Hopefully, Makhanya will come to understand that the people are not fools. This is demonstrated by the fact that throughout the years of our young democracy, in our successive elections, ever increasing numbers of our people have voted for the ANC to govern our country in all spheres of government, reflecting their confidence in our movement as their tried and tested representative and leader. In this regard, I accept that the obviously learned Editor Makhanya might very well conclude that whereas he is wise, the people are fools.
Clearly, Makhanya wishes that our President becomes "a lonely man". He also wishes that our President is faced with the challenge that he is "unable to control his party", whatever this means. He also imagines that the President is "unsure of his power", whatever this means, and is "fearful of a certain policeman", again whatever that means.
With regard to all this, I would like to remind Makhanya of the English proverb: "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride!" Makhanya is at perfect liberty to ride his horse, and race away to his heart's content to his world of illusions, created by a mirage of wishes.
Makhanya states that the Gautrain "makes no sense". Again he is free to state his opposition to the project, and use the Sunday Times vigorously to campaign against this important project, as some in the media campaigned vigorously against the construction of the Port of Coega/Ngqura. But Makhanya should not rely on fabrications to substantiate his case against the Gautrain project, or any other government initiative.
The hard and naked reality is that, unless they produce facts that prove us wrong, the Sunday Times, the DA, SACP and COSATU have absolutely no factual basis to substantiate the serious allegation they made with regard to the Gautrain, that there was any corrupt government or ministerial intervention of any kind, intended to enrich any of the national ministers and other leaders of the ANC. Put in plain language, when this strange consortium made this allegation, it told a naked lie.
The question remains to be answered - how did it come about that an absolute falsehood could, even temporarily, seem to gain even a veneer of veracity?
We will continue to argue that this happened because of an entrenched racist stereotype that continues to inform much of the public discourse in our country and elsewhere in the world. Simply, as all thinking people know very well, the power of prejudice is sufficient to displace the truth, taking its place as what, ultimately, some journalists, caught in the act of misrepresenting reality, will present as "perception", a category of human understanding of objective reality that is often used to justify the communication of untruths.
COSATU has argued that in his letter our President used "the race card". It said that our President "throws the race card even against organisations whose membership is constituted mainly by the very ANC members he is leading". It is most instructive, and perhaps by no means accidental, that the standard language of the DA, specifically "the race card", has now found a home in the vocabulary of spokespersons of COSATU.
Of additional interest in this regard is the gross vulgarisation of the message our President sought to convey when he wrote about the racist stereotype of Africans. For our part, we will continue to assert the obvious truth that this stereotyping remains, still, an important feature of our national legacy of colonialism and apartheid.
Some of the ideas of the previously dominant ruling group during the centuries of white minority rule in our country continue to influence the national consciousness, including some among the formerly oppressed - as represented, for instance, by the colloquial expression, "umlungu mdala!" -'the white people are blessed with the exclusive wisdom of maturity'.
The first point to make about this is that the COSATU statement was not issued by the "membership" to which the COSATU statement referred. Nothing has happened that demonstrates that the masses of our working people who constitute the membership and supporters of COSATU, many of whom are indeed members and supporters of the ANC, agree that their organisation, the ANC, is corrupt.
The second point is that both in 2001 and now, the President referred to the prevalence in our society of a racist stereotype that influences everybody, regardless of their race and colour. To the extent that this is internalised by those who speak for the formerly oppressed, it reflects what the African American leader, Malcolm X, described when he spoke about "the house Negro" and "the field Negro".
In terms of our own political history, we know that the Black Consciousness Movement, as led by patriots such as Bantu Biko, Barney Pityana, Ongopotse Tiro and others, and from which many of us originate, drew attention to the submissive slave mentality among some of our people which Malcom X sought to oppose and repudiate. None of us can therefore pretend that we do not understand how some of us, as black people, can become so enslaved, psychologically, that it becomes possible for us to internalise our "master's" definition of who we are.
If we are wrong in making this assertion, those who say we are will have to explain how it comes about that our leadership gets smeared with the terrible brush of corruption through the abuse of office, when not a single fact can be produced to substantiate this allegation. We are certain that this is entirely a result of pure, unadulterated prejudice.
The leadership of the ANC as a whole, and not just the President, is convinced that this derives from the racist stereotype that as Africans we are inherently corrupt. We know too that the overwhelming majority of our country's workers do not believe that we are corrupt and have never made any such accusation. Similarly, we are certain that, like the ANC, these workers firmly repudiate the racist stereotype of Africans, and all false conclusions that result from this insulting image of our people.
** Smuts Ngonyama is the ANC Head of Presidency, National Spokesperson and Editor of ANC Today. |
