One of the gravest threats to a constitutional democracy in a one party-dominant system, is the conflation of the governing party with the state. Where this happens, the dominant political party begins to act as if it is the state and its officials begin to believe that they are above the law or that they can make up the laws as they go along without having to revert to Parliament. Leaders of the party and officials with close ties to the party begin to act according to the apocryphal (but probably wrong) statement attributed to King Louis XIV of France who is reported to have said L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the State”).
Several events over the past week suggest that a worrying and deeply authoritarian belief is taking root amongst some ANC officials and among some members of the police that they ARE the state and thus have a right to do as they please – regardless of what the law actually empowers them to do. News that the Presidency issued an instruction banning all demonstrations around the Union Buildings without having the legal authority to do so is a case in point. The actions of President Jacob Zuma’s body guards, who intimidated photographers who had the temerity to take pictures of his car and of his house, while the bodyguards had no legal authority to do so, is another.
Then there is the scandalous story of Floyd Shivambu, who moonlights as spokesperson for the ANC Youth League when he is not acting as a mafia-style thug, trying to intimidate journalists to stop asking questions about Julius Malema’s various business interests, his tenderpreneurial wealth and his alleged failure to pay taxes. Shivambu has been distributing a document containing private details of journalists who have been investigating Malema in an attempt to intimidate them – much like a mafia boss would break a few fingers of a suspected informer to shut him up.
Given the fact that President Zuma’s rise to power was accompanied by serious (and credible) allegations that state institutions were misused by his predecessor to score political points against him, one would have thought that Zuma would be extra vigilant about the misuse of state institutions for private financial and political gain and about respect for the Rule of Law. Sadly, it has become apparent that complaints about the misuse of state institutions and the breaking of the law during the Mbeki era had little to do with principle and everything to do with the fact that the law was being misused by the other side.
Now we have Shivambu peddling private information about the bank account numbers and salaries of journalists – all because they dared to report honestly on the shady dealings of Malema. Where did Shivambu obtain this information? Did buddies in the police or intelligence services provide this information to him? If not, who broke the law to gather this private information on journalists? What about their right to privacy and dignity?
If the ANC had any principles it would immediately repudiate the ANC Youth League and Shivambu for peddling private information about South African citizens and take disciplinary action against Shivambu. After all, when the Sunday Times published the medical records of then Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the ANC was scandalized and shouted blue murder about the infringement of Tshabalala-Msimang’s right to privacy. If the ANC fails to take action, it would show at the very least, that it has one standard for its own leaders and another for the rest of us: THEY have rights, WE don’t.
I would be surprised if the ANC acts in a principled manner and takes action against the thugs employed as President Zuma’s bodyguards or against the mafia-style bullies in the ANC Youth League. Because some in the ANC conflate the party and the state, there is an inability to see what a serious threat these actions pose for our democracy. Once bodyguards, Youth League officials and members of the intelligence services and the police start acting as if they are above the law, we might as well abolish Parliament. Why have a Parliament, tasked with passing legislation, when that legislation is only applied to some and not to others?
Legislation strictly control the role of intelligence services in gathering and disseminating information on private citizens. Legislation also limit the power of police officers and bodyguards. There is a good reason for that. Once the intelligence services and the police become a law onto themselves, they will be used by powerful politicians to harass journalists and to investigate political opponents and media critics in order to undermine democracy and entrench their own power by subverting the willow the people.
When that happens, a population starts living in fear of its leaders and criticism of leaders becomes dangerous or even fatal. Leaders are then free to do what they want, to get as many crooked tenders and to steal as much money form the poor as the taxpayers can provide. The result is an end of democracy and the start of an authoritarian kleptocracy.
We are not there yet, but that is no reason for complacency. The thuggish behavior fundamentally undermines the authority of the democratic elected Parliament and the principle of the separation of powers which states that Parliament makes the laws and the executive implement the laws. We have not voted for the ANC Youth League. Neither have we voted for President Zuma’s bodyguards. We have voted for the 400 members of Parliament who must make the laws, laws which must be obeyed by everyone, whether one is the President, a presidential bodyguard or a member of the ANC Youth League.
What bothers me is that the good people in the ANC do not speak out about these tendencies. Only Cosatu makes noises about this, while Ministers and other ANC leaders remain silent. Everybody is too scared of Malema and the security services to say anything. When will the good people in the ANC speak out? How do they go to bed at night when they know that there are members in their organization who are undermining the very democracy for which we have fought?
“When will the good people in the ANC speak out? How do they go to bed at night when they know that there are members in their organization who are undermining the very democracy for which we have fought?”
Those are rather troubling questions.
The cause is twofold as I see it.
Firstly, and most importantly, our activists have largely turned into wimps who value personal gains of whatsoever sort above and beyond the struggle for transformation and democracy.
The other is a consequence of our electoral system – until we vote directly for our elected officials they will be nearly completely dependent on the loudest voices in the movement, so they simply have to shut up, suck up and having sold their activist souls they beg for “deployment”.
Could this be why the ANC people have not spoken out?
http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=166997&sn=Detail
good people in the ANC?! talk about an oxymoron…
mzo says:
March 19, 2010 at 9:25 am
“Could this be why the ANC people have not spoken out?”
Very interesting piece – thanks.
Corruption can and should be exposed at every level and there should be no holy ground.
Blackmail, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter – keeping information on the corrupt as part of the bag of tricks is possibly the worst kind of crookedness and should not be tolerated in our society.
To the best of my recollection you supported the flagrant infringement of the late Manto’s (may her soul rest in peace) rights by the publication of her medical records, why therefore should Floyd not be entitled to do the same. After all the Journo is question is a public figure who regularly reports on other peoples’ “misdeeds”. SANEF and journalists have again revealed the hypocrites they are by refusing to publish the allegations against the journalists when they themselves do so regularly. Hell, they even supported the transgression of a law through the publication of the late Manto’s records. I concur though that it is unacceptable that ANC heavy weights have access to intelligence on citizens, however your suggestion that the accusations of abuse of power against Mbeki were “credible” is merely a figment of an overactive imagination.
My reading of the reason for the eerie silence [ even Kader Asmal is 'shutuping' ] is because they know Zuma fell out of favour with Vavi/Cosatu/SACP – and he needs a powerbase to survive this term and to possibly go for a second term. And he has chosen Malema/ANCYL as his powerbase.
Thus, to speak out [ if you're not from Cosatu/SACP ], would be to commit political suicide.
In the meantime Zuma’s ANCYL pitbullterriers are roaming free – chasing, attacking and tearing on whoever they like. And the press and journalists seems to be preferred targets.
Mzo, Xulu’s article is laughably incoherent. This has nothing to do with exposing the truth – we all know that. It has to do with intimidation to try and prevent the truth about certain politicians being published. If there is evidence that any journalist is corrupt in that he or she has received money to write a certain story then such a journalist must be investigated and disciplined or even prosecuted. As far as I can tell the allegations of Youth league contains no credible evidence of such. It cottons private details of journalists affairs to intimidate journalists and stop them from writing the truth. This is thuggish behavior.
Vuyo, there is a vast difference in law between position of a Minister who holds certain views and implements certain policies and whose salaries we as taxpayers pay for and journalists who write for the media. Information relevant to that Ministers portfolio – even if private – is not protected. We call that democracy. Ministers have less privacy than the rest of us. Democracy again. And accountability. Check it out, it works. Journalists are private citizens. Unless they break the law or the rules of journalistic ethics, their private lives is irrelevant. Where a doctor has an affair with X, it is completely irrelevant to the fact whether that doctor is good at open heart surgery. Publishing false or untested info on that affair is therefore not allowed. Publishing such info to try and prevent the doctor from performing life saving heart surgery on a political opponent borders on criminal. That is what Floyd is doing. The Minister’s drunkenness and her thieving tendencies were both important pieces of fact which voters may legitimately use to decide whether to vote for the party she was part of. Democracy again. Try it!
Pierre, you always make such logical sense out of everything. I can only wish that people see and understand your views. We really need some ANC members to stand up and take some principled (and of course potentially unpopular) stands about these abuses of power. And they need to do so because perhaps they are the only ones with the credibility required to have any effect on these bullies.
No, Mr. De Vos, the actual difference between rich hacks smearing politicians, and the politicians themselves, is not so great as you pretend. It is a constructed difference, manufactured by the ruling class to protect the ruling class. Thus when the smear artists shriek about their own private lives being exposed, we should certainly stop to think about their integrity and morality.
Incidentally, your reference to the Sunday Times is startlingly mistaken. Had you actually familiarised yourself with the Tshabalala-Msimang case, you would know that the newspaper obtained the Minister’s stolen medical records, which related to a Johannesburg hospitalisation for a shoulder operation, and then pretended that it had records pertaining to the Minister’s hospitalisation in Cape Town for a liver transplant. Only when the newspaper was taken to court did the facts come out, and if the judge had not been too cowardly to make a ruling against the newspaper (doubtless because of its awesome political connections) it could have got into serious legal trouble.
This is the answer to your question; good people are worried about attacking the leadership of the ANC, because unfortunately the ANC is the only thing standing between the feeble social democracy of the Mbeki government and the vicious neoliberal corruption of the white ruling class. The Zuma government is much worse than most such people expected it to be (they were fooled, largely by media propaganda, but also by the misguided belief that the hundreds of delegates who backed Zuma at Polokwane couldn’t all be crooks). However, even those who reluctantly acknowledge this tend to defend the ANC against the enemies of the 1994 settlement.
The problem with this position is that, because the Zuma regime in the ANC is genuinely repressive (unlike the make-believe about Mbeki which you continually talk about without every providing evidence, because there is none) this effectively means that the opposition within the ANC is incapable of organisation. Most opposition leaders have been purged and the remainder are too disunited to do anything effective. (The difference about Kader Asmal is that he has been so marginalised that he poses no threat to the Zuma regime. Also, to be blunt, he is not a person whom anyone takes seriously except for rhetorical effect.)
This is a serious political problem, and the end product will be the collapse of the social democratic consensus and a return to reactionary politics, doubtless ultimately steered by white big businessmen. As a result, South African socio-economic policies will become catastrophically unsuited to the interests of the population. (But at least the ANC will be destroyed.) Does that bother you at all?
I have learnt something new today. The Citizens/society is allowed to be immoral and corrupt as they are not accountable to anyone but politicians are banned from being the same because they are accountable to the public.
______________________________________________________________
Prof said: Information relevant to that Ministers portfolio – even if private – is not protected. We call that democracy. Ministers have less privacy than the rest of us. Democracy again. And accountability. Check it out, it works. Journalists are private citizens.
It never ceases to amaze me that when battle lines are drawn in SA Blacks will tend to be on this side and Whites on the other, for instance most informed Black people see a lot of sense in exposing the holier than thou dirty linen of journalists, how can you expose corruption if you yourself are corrupt and when those you expose also expose you, you cry media freedom is under attack?
Prof, thank you for writing this article but you are biased for corrupt journalist should also be exposed using the same tactics that they use, if such journalists have incriminating evidence on politicians they must report it to the police in addition to publisicing it so too can the politicians .Media in this country is corrupt and biased against certain individuals and organisations, this was especially evident in their reporting of Hillary Squires judgment. Even the judiciary is corrupt and biased hence the lighter sentences meted out to whites who “mistakes” Blacks for baboons and heavy sentences for blacks who kills whites.These are facts that people are afraid to speak out on, whites control the media and judiciary, what do you expect?
Mar 19th, 2010 by Pierre De Vos
“What bothers me is that the good people in the ANC do not speak out about these tendencies.”
I can think of no other conclusion than this: There are no good people in the top structures of the ANC left to speak out.
@mdu
So what if the journalist is corrupt up to his fingertips?
What does the character of the journalist have to do with his job?
Politicians are not journalists. The journalism profession has standards and structures in place that deal with all kinds of reporting.
Exposing the corruption of politicians is in the public interest; not necessarily so with journalists.
There are procedures for dealing with unethical journalistic practices. Blackmail and extortion are certainly NOT one of them.
It’s a dog-eat-dog situation (not meant lirerally!!!). The question I ask is: how can the ANC sleep at night and not think of those thousands/millions of peopple who voted for them in the hope that their misery would improve? How can ANC members look in the mirror and say with a clear conscience “we have fulfilled our election promises of providing decent homes for the poor”? How dare the ANC call themselves a “people’s party”?
Pierre De Vos says:
March 19, 2010 at 10:11 am
“Journalists are private citizens. Unless they break the law or the rules of journalistic ethics, their private lives is irrelevant.”
Did not seem to apply in the Jani Allan/Tereblanche episode!
@ Mdu
Good God man !
If I ate a can of alphabet soup I could crap out a comment that has more logic than yours.
How many instances of the baboon story are there ? One in the last 100 years ? 1 in the last 10 years ? One in the last 5 years. Some idiot once used it as an excuse and you in your infinite wisdom have concluded that this is what whites do to the extent it’s become an urban legend.
Now about those farm murders that black criminals are so good at…. what do you think they mistook the whites for ? And why do you think they never get caught ? I’ll tell you …. ANC connections.
There seems to be some confusion and a lot of wild allegations thrown about. I think it is important that journalists who are corrupt – in that they broke the law – should be brought to book like any other corrupt person should. But we do not pay the salaries of journalists and we never voted for them so unlike politicians they are not, in our democratic system, accountable to us in the same manner politicians are. Journalists play a pivotal role in a democracy to inform the public about what politicians do. This allows us to make informed choices about who to vote for. As we do not vote for journalists the same does not apply to them. Journalists must act within the law and if they do not, they must be prosecuted. Whether a journalist sleeps around or has financial troubles or is friendly with X or Y is however completely irrelevant for their job unless their actions present them with a conflict of interest (say journalist sleeps with X and then writes glowing stories about X that would be unethical and the journalist should be fired). In this case, the allegations do not seem to centre around such matters but around personal details of journalists lives that might – if true – be embarrassing to a particular journalist. The allegations are made to try and stop journalists from doing their jobs by reporting accurately on what politicians gets up to. This is profoundly undemocratic and scary. Calling a journalist corrupt because he or she reports something scandalous about a politician is not only illogical but also self-serving and dangerous. Better to focus on the issues, which is whether what journalists report are true or not. If they report untruths that should be challenged by providing the correct facts. This has not happened here, one suspects because the reports are not untrue.
Unless these journalists have something to hide, this should be a stillborn.
Pierre De Vos says: March 19, 2010 at 13:26 pm
“we do not pay the salaries of journalists and we never voted for them so unlike politicians they are not, in our democratic system, accountable to us in the same manner politicians are.”
Prof, seeing that you do not pay the ANCYL’s salaries (at least not directly, maybe indirectly through Chancellor House etc and the general blurring of lines between the ANC and the State – but’s that a story for another day) and you can never vote for the ANCYL leadership (purely on the basis of you not being a member by virtue of your age – without even talking about your political allegiance), how are these people accountable to you?
I would have thought, a journo who writes for a newspaper you generally base your opinions on should be more accountable to you (personally) than an ANCYL member whose salary you do not pay and you never voted for!!
We do not pay journalists salaries but we buy their newspapers with a resonable trusted expectation that they provide news that are thruthful, balanced, factual, not malicious etc. Therefore they need to be people of integrity and not abuse our trust and naivity.
With respect Pierre, in the modern political-economy your comment borders on the naïve. A politician, such as a minister, holds that position through a democratic process, and can certainly be removed through the very same democratic process. A journalist on the other hand lacks, firstly, the legitimacy of democratic appointment and accountability via the process of democratic recall, yet in any modern society wields (in most instances) more power than a politician. No one would dispute, for example, that the collective media in RSA wields more influence and power than any opposition MP, ruling party MP or even one member of executive. In fact, the media can lay the grounds for a removal of a politician through a concerted campaign against such a politician (e.g. Thabo Mbeki, Winnie Mandela, Manto, etc) or alternatively create an aura of greatness around even the weakest of leaders (Nelson Mandela, Jacob Zuma, Bill Clinton, etc). Yet the media is not accountable to anyone but itself and the shareholders who control media houses! I therefore am of the view that as much as politicians arguably are entitled to less of the entitlement to privacy, so do the editors, journalists, etc, more particularly since they themselves regularly impinge on the privacy of third parties (politicians, celebrities, etc).
To restate that they are private citizens is not relevant, even ministers and corrupt business people are private citizens. Why should they be entitled to report on allegation of politicians and “public figures” and yet the targets of their reports cannot report on allegations against journalists. Frankly its rank hypocrisy that is characteristic of the media exceptionalism that has latterly become prevalent. If you argue that a minister’s drunkenness is relevant to a voter, you ought to also argue that a journalist’s alleged fraud, adultery, tax evasion, etc, is similarly relevant to the reader, precisely because we expect honest reporting and therefore honest journalists. Yet in this instance, the media has used its power to quash pertinent allegations!
If you questioned the manner Floyd procured the data on the journalist and the legality of such means, I would not fault you, but to pretend that journalists are merely objective and unbiased peddlers of news is amazingly naïve. What is good for the goose necessarily must b good for the gander.
Mzo, the ANCYL exercises public power.
When I last checked disclosure was a delict.
Mdu said: “most informed Black people see a lot of sense in exposing the holier than thou dirty linen of journalists”.
a) Mdu does not speak for most black people any more than I do
b) the kleptocrats hate and fear journalists almost as much as they did the Scorpions. Hence ‘most informed Black people’ on this blog rallying around the media-bashers.
Vuyo, thank you very much for that eloquent elucidation.
Brett Nortje, just look at the opinions of the bloggers here to verify my opinion!
Vuyo, thanks for your response. However, I beg to differ with you. Although I agree (how can I not) that the media has much influence in our society and although I also agree that the media has a duty to try and report honestly and fairly on events, I do not see how members of the media can be equated with politicians. If we voted for politicians and political parties purely on the quality of what they did in their jobs after an election, I would have argued that, like members of the media, their private affairs, how many children they have fathered and whether they are friends with this or that crook, would usually be irrelevant unless it related directly to their job performance. But we vote for politicians based not only on the quality of their work (if we did, few of us would ever vote for anyone), but also about whether we like and trust the politicians and feel that they share our values and world views. A vote is a complex thing and we decide to vote based on many factors. In a democracy we need information that is relevant to all these factors to make up our minds who to vote for. That is why private actions of politicians will often be relevant and why the press has a duty to report on it – even if it does not directly relate to the ability of the politician to do his or her job brilliantly. We buy newspapers because we expect the paper to provide us with relatively fair and accurate reporting but we do not vote for individual journalists and whether we like them personally or not has nothing to do with the accuracy of their work. Those of us who knows better know that one can never expect any journalist to be absolutely objective as that is impossible. By deciding to report on X and not Y, by giving more prominence to fact X than Y and by relying on some and not other commentators, journalists shape the news. That is why we have a free media, so that there can be many journalists and many media sources with different slants on the same story which allows us to be as informed as possible. We can of course expect journalists to get their facts right or at least to make every effort to do so. We judge journalists on what they do and how they do it and not who they are. Journalists are therefore very different from politicians. They are accountable though because if they get the facts wrong they can be forced to correct this or they can even be sued for defamation. If a paper continuously misinforms us (like City Press seemed to do during Vusi Mona’s term as editor) then we can stop buying that paper (as I stopped being City Press during that time). If the paper chooses to focus on stories which we do not like, we can also stop buying the paper (as some people have done with the Sunday Times for a while because it had chosen to report many negative stories on Thabo Mbeki. There is nothing wrong with this. It is called media freedom. Some people, however, do not like media freedom because it exposes those on the wrong end of the media to unwanted scrutiny and can destroy their names – especially when they have done things which are bad, immoral or criminal.
In any event, even if you disagreed with me on this, and continues to believe that the private lives of journalists should all be an open book, I cannot see how you can excuse the actions of Mr Shivambu. This is because he is not making these allegations (wild and unsubstantiated as they might be) out of an altruistic search for truth and honesty. He is doing so to intimidate journalists so they will stop writing the truth about Malema. He is NOT making any credible claims that the journalists wrote false things about Malema BECAUSE of anything in their private lives. If he could claim this Malema could then sue the papers and the journalists for defamation and get lost of money from them. Failure to pursue legal action against the journalists suggest there are no credible claims of deliberate falsehoods being spread (as our esteemed former President Mbeki used to say). It suggests that because the reported facts cannot be refuted and because there are fears that journalists will report accurately on other as yet unknown incriminating facts about MAlema, Shivambu is using thuggish tactics to try and threaten journalists into NOT reporting the truth. This can only be seen as a good thing if one thinks that it is a bad thing for the media to report honestly on Malema or if one believes the media should not report at all on Malema’s alleged corruption. If you support that kind of action, then I would be a bit worried about your ethical compass and your commitment to open and accountable government. Although I cannot vote for Malema, ANC Youth Leagea members can . Malema has much power within the alliance and whether he gets elected has a bearing on our politics in and outside of the legislature and the executive. Those ANC members who can vote for Malema and others in the ANC government and structures who may be swayed through persuasion or intimidation by Malema to toe his line and to shut up while he mops up tenders in Limpopo, has a right to know what he is up to. If papers falsify facts about him, he should sue. If not, he should shut up along with Shivambu. Failure to do so will force many of us democrats to judge them very harshly indeed for their thuggish and anti-demoratic behavior that threatens the very fabric of our constitutional system in which the media plays an important watchdog role.
@ The Creator
“the ANC is the only thing standing between the feeble social democracy of the Mbeki government and the vicious neoliberal corruption of the white ruling class”
The Creator is right. Just imagine “Madam” Zille taking over! She would reinstate a vicious system of neo-liberal capitalism! The result would be a yawning gulf between rich and poor. Rich people would drive new German cars, while the poor squatted in shacks.
(Also, the neo-liberal corruption that has so gutted the Western Cape and Cape Town would surely spread to Limpopo.)
Vuyo is also right. Journalist are neo-liberal muckrakers. Editors should be elected, and made responsible to the masses.
Press freedom is fine — so long as it is exercised RESPONSIBLY!
Nyiko Floyd SHIVAMBU: SA ID: 830101 5949 08 8 (DOB: 01-01-1983)
mzo says:
March 19, 2010 at 13:45 pm
Prof De Vos, and I, pay for Malema’s police protection. And I see it as theft of my money by the government.
Welcome back President Zuma!
“Some have decided to go against this agreed position of this National Executive Committee and continue debating succession and stating preferences publicly, even casting aspersions on the senior leadership of the ANC.”
“Let me emphasise that the utterances that are made about the Secretary General of the ANC do not only impact on the person of the SG, but on the
dignity and integrity of the ANC.
“An attack on the Secretary General hits at the belly of the ANC. It is totally unacceptable that the Secretary General of the ANC should be treated in this manner. We must not tolerate it. We do not attack the SG of the ANC, it is never done, and it is not the tradition of our movement. During the years in exile there was no Deputy President, and the SG was number two in the organisation. No matter how many mistakes the SG would make, he was never attacked in public. We will not respond to those outside who are
clamouring for us to defend the SG in public. Our view is that we should solve these problems right here and not join the public debates on these issues, as that does not take us anywhere. …
“There is no reason to attack a comrade who is a Minister, deployed by the ANC, when you can meet and discuss issues that are of concern directly
with the comrade. The ANC Youth League issued a statement attacking the Minister of Finance, Comrade Pravin Gordhan, referring to him as an un-elected leader. Comrade Gordhan is one of the key and most senior leaders of the ANC and has come a long way…
“The point is that I had been asked to deal with the matter with the Minister, and while I was still attending to it, the attacks occur. If you attack a Minister you are also attacking the President, as you are questioning his judgement in appointing that Minister. In addition, we must adhere to the principle of playing the ball and not the man. This behaviour cannot be allowed to
continue.
“This culture of publicly attacking each other will become entrenched if we do not act against it. We will create an image of an organisation and country dogged by tension and infighting. This NEC meeting must draw a line between what is acceptable and what is not. There must be consequences
for people’s actions.”
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/nec/2010/march.pdf
Maggs is right.
Pdv: Do not expect any political party to wash its filthy laundry in the public baths.
There is no need for public criticism of the ANC by comrades.
Complaints are best raised behind closed doors.
Signs of disunity are exploited by neo-liberal6. the press, and racists!
Thanks
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 20, 2010 at 9:05 am
Hey Dworky,
Happy Saturday.
Cracked up so early?
Don’t drive.
Hallo Maggs. Hope you are having a lovely weekend.
All jokes aside, I was slightly disappointed you left out the speech where JZ said Cd Malema was worthy of “inheriting” the ANC. But the larger point remains: in the meantime, this noble but impetuous young man must not give ammunition to the ANC’s enemies by publicly criticising other comrades!
Thanks.
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
March 20, 2010 at 9:28 am
“All jokes aside, I was slightly disappointed you left out the speech where JZ said Cd Malema was worthy of “inheriting” the ANC.”
Good w/e thanks – ditto.
I commented on that some time ago – to the effect that that would be a disaster and that I am many like me would not support a Malema led ANC, but you know that already.
I sense that with the affirmations by ANC leadership, Malema has assumed himself to be bigger than the ANC.
The lessons from history that no one is seems to have passed him by – but then maybe woodwork, rather than history, is his intellectual strength.
oops – no one is bigger than the ANC seems to have passed him by
Actually the media and SANEF have an excellent history of exposing and expelling members of their profession who are found to be corrupt.
And the ANC have an excellent history of employing those exposed and corrupt journalists.
Vusi Mona and Ranjeni Munusamay are excellent examples.
Maggs, I would have thought that when an incumbent leader of a party publicy endorses as the future leader of that party a young man whom, by common agreement, is a profoundly stupid person, and who holds a number of views that one finds reprehensible, one would be likely to withdraw one’s support from the incumbent leader.
Michael Osborne says:
March 20, 2010 at 11:44 am
Hey Michael,
That’s one approach which perhaps works for some.
I guess that you have suggested in a round about way that I should withdraw my support for Zuma because he said the silly fellow is future presidential material – I am even more convinced now that my support for Zuma is the right choice for me.
Maggs
“I am even more convinced now that my support for Zuma is the right choice for me.”
Maggs, this puzzles me. I can understand why you may wish to dismiss Zuma’s enthusiastic endorsement of Malema as rhetorical, or irrelevant, because the possibility of Malama’s ascendancy is distant.
What I cannot grasp is why that support weighs as a net positive in you evaluation of JZ.
Pierre
To suggest; “We have voted for the 400 members of Parliament who must make the laws….”is totally inaccurate. We have not voted for a single member of Parliament.
Our electoral system makes provision for us to vote for a political party only. It is the party’s internal List Committee that draws up a closed list of candidates to represent that party in Parliament. So unless you are on the List Committee, even as a card-carrying member of the ANC, you have no influence over who gets deployed to Parliament, the Provincial Legislatures or Local Councils.
This electoral system has turned Parliament into a Luthuli House lapdog. It explains the weakness of SCOPA and failure of Chapter 9 institutions to make pronouncements not favoured by the ruling cabal. It leaves us, the electorate, with no mechanism with which to hold any of these “elected” representatives to account.
To call our political landscape a democracy is also problematic. Under an ANC government and with our electoral system, we enjoy something called democratic centralism. So yes, we fought for democracy, but what we got in the end was centralism. As I already pointed out, the democratic part does not stretch very far.
Unless we do something to shift the focus of our “elected” representatives to the electorate and away from Luthuli House we will continue to see a further erosion of Parliament, with questionable appointments to Chapter 9 institutions (e.g. Lawrence Mushwana), as well as questionable appointments being made by the President (e.g. Menzi Simelane and Jon Qwelane).
Let’s look at the guardians of our constitutional democracy: I am deeply disappointed in the office of the Auditor General when Shauket Faki allowed Mbeki to edit his findings on the arms deal to such a degree as to arrive at the opposite conclusion. I am deeply disappointed in the office of the Public Protector when the Supreme Court found that Lawrence Mushwana did not do his job when looking into the Oilgate scandal. I am deeply disappointed in the office of the Speaker of Parliament when Baleka Mbete decided to buy the debtor’s book rather than act against the Travelgate MP’s. I am deeply disappointed to learn that Lawrence Mushwana now heads the Human Rights Commission. I am deeply disappointed in the way the Electoral Commission undermined the work of the Electoral Task Team that investigated alternative electoral systems in 2003. Recently the JSC demonstrated quite clearly how susceptible it was to the wishes of Jeff Radebe.
We should not have to rely on “the good ANC members” to save the day. We, the electorate should have the power to hold to account our elected representatives. How do we do that we don’t elect them to start with?
I go numb every time I hear someone suggest that we should hold our government to account because s/he never says how we should go about doing it.
@ Adri
I find no fault with your logic, it makes u think.
Perhaps the question should be, Why are the good members of the ANC not suggesting the very same changes that you are advancing?
Adri – the Adri of that vicious backhand attack in Seapoint?
You do not propose a solution and how we would get there. A constituency based system would result in a way larger ANC majority in parliament and the obliteration of smaller parties. It would also result in the most unholy dogfights within the ANC for power in each constituency (how would the party rep in each be decided upon? – vote in the local branch?) – witness what is happening at ward and council levels. At least on the party list system the ANC can pick from it’s, er, finest talent to man the benches, as opposed to the biggest warlord in each constituency.
Seems to me the strongest solution to our accountability woes is for there to be real opposition that could conceivably take power. Current talks amongst the smaller parties are hopeful, and the ongoing ANC PR train wreck will hopefully get us there sooner than we think.
Maggs is quintessential ‘stemvee’!
@MDF
Quote “The result would be a yawning gulf between rich and poor. Rich people would drive new German cars, while the poor squatted in shacks.”
Sounds pretty much like present day SA under the ANC, if you ask me.
I (unfortunately) have business meetings in Sandton once a month – guess who the drivers of the mercedes Benz and BMW’s are (hint – they aint white!).
There is a large and growing black middle class in Gauteng, which is a very good thing.
Your second quote:
“(Also, the neo-liberal corruption that has so gutted the Western Cape and Cape Town would surely spread to Limpopo.)”
If life in the W Cape is so bad, why have there been so many black migrants from the E Cape settling there?
The truth, if you would care to do proper research is that opposition parties like the ID and DA advocate a mixed economy on the lines of the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Sweden and Norway), not a purer form of capitalism like the USA, with the various market failures that accompany such Econo-political systems.
it is no surprise that these same scandinavian countries are regularly top of the pile in the list of least corrupt countries (The USA does not fare particularly well on this score, neither does Britain)
Back on subject, any ANC member that speaks out against the ruling cabal would be immediately censured.
You people speak as if the revolution is over; may I suggest that you look around, and realise that we’ve gone back to the future? It’s 1985 all over again out there – and the struggle continues, I’m afraid.
Viva the democratic revolution, viva! One man one vote! Forward to a democratic South Africa!
Hugh – the “vicious backhand attack in Seapoint” does not ring any bell.
Firstly, our constitution does not make provision for a “first-past-the-post” constituency based electoral system that will obliterate smaller parties. Secondly, the “unholy dogfights within the ANC for power” is symptomatic of our party list electoral system where Luthuli House holds the gaze of members of legislatures – not the electorate.
I have no qualms about an ANC majority in Parliament. I lament the fact that our electoral system does not include any mechanism whereby we the electorate can hold any of them to account individually. Our electoral system makes no provision for the right to re-call individual members. Our only recourse is to vote another party into office.
To suggest we vote another party into office is to suggest we throw the baby out with the bath water. And who’s to say the next baby will be more responsive because we still would not have the mechanism with which to hold our “elected representatives” to account.
Our constitution requires the following of our electoral system:
● that it be prescribed by national legislation
● that it be based on a national common voters roll
● provides for a minimum voting age of 18 years
● that it results, in general, in proportional representation
● regular elections and a multi-party system of democratic government
to ensure accountability, responsiveness and openness
In 2003 an electoral task team under the stewardship of Van Zyl Slabbert submitted to Cabinet a majority report recommending an alternative electoral system for South Africa – one that will satisfy the fifth requirement that I mentioned. It was rejected by Thabo Mbeki’s Cabinet in favour of a minority report recommending we retain the dreaded party list system.
The solution I propose is to challenge the legality / constitutionality of retaining the proportional representation closed party list electoral system beyond its expiry date of 1999.
Pierre
Your view?
Adri writes:
“To suggest we vote another party into office is to suggest we throw the baby out with the bath water”
Is the “baby” you refer to Ju-Ju? Is so, I would ask you to show a little more respect.
@ Adri
“To suggest we vote another party into office is to suggest we throw the baby out with the bath water”
Is the “baby” you refer to Ju-Ju? Is so, I would ask you to show a little more respect.
But apart from that, I must concur with you. As Maggs and I have often agreed, the DA is no real alternative. They would hand the country back to the capitalists. We would have vast inequalities again — like under apartheid!
“Zuma may go, but no one can hold things together. I do not believe that the ANC will be voted out of power in the short run. The Congress of the People emerged from within ANC but did not present a clear alternative. My sense is that a broad popular, democratic, transformatory, pluralist, gender and sexualities friendly, emancipatory platform needs to be advanced. Neither a purely left project, nor one excluding individual ANC members. ”
Raymond Suttner is a former ANC/SACP underground operative, UDF, ANC and SACP leader, political prisoner and author of a book on the Zuma era to be published by Jacana later this year. He is currently a professor at Unisa
http://www.dispatch.co.za/article.aspx?id=389295
Michael Osborne says:
March 20, 2010 at 14:28 pm
“What I cannot grasp is why that support weighs as a net positive in you evaluation of JZ.”
Hey Micheal,
JZ’s support for Malema does not weigh as a “net positive”.
It is Zuma’s contribution towards the creation of space for debate that encourages me, even if the substance of the debate and/or the nature of the rhetoric, as is often the case of Malema’s outbursts, is silly.
Malema is nothing more than a confused noise maker of note, without substance; I am not sure why people even regard him seriously. I must hasten to add that there was a time when I thought that Malema held promise and potential but that time has passed.
I find the journo bashing rather funny, given that a certain Ms Ranjeni Munusamy was exposed for having a dodgy article printed in a rival paper after her employer had rejected it. Oh, wait. Doesn’t she now hold a high paying Departmental Media Spokesperson’s job? Too too crazy.
Some of us do speak up. We just don’t get the headlines.
My view is that Mbeki is being disingenuous in expressing surprise that a distance existed and had opened up between the two of them – as the distance was real and felt. How else can one construe the whole sorry process of hugely delaying Slabbert’s recommended appointment to be the Chair of the Electoral Reform Commission and then the subsequent tawdry shelving of its important report by Cabinet, other than it being a conscious attempt to down-play or sideline Slabbert?
(Although it was Kader Asmal at a Cabinet meeting who led the charge to shelve the report by recommending that Cabinet members put the report in their wastepaper baskets. When Slabbert revealed this at a public meeting in March 2008, Asmal’s petulant squeals that this claim formed a ‘violation of Cabinet confidentiality’ only served to confirm that he had said this.)
But there are several interpretations of why the Slabbert-Mbeki relationship went off the rails. Moshoeshoe Monare in an article in the Sunday Independent (16 May, 2010) quotes an interview where he directly asked Slabbert what accounted for the distance between him and Mbeki. Slabbert told him it was because Mbeki “was jealous and and thought I was his competitor for power.”
http://politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=184052&sn=Detail
Brown envelopes, Malema was right.
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-06-30-argus-reporter-was-rasools-man