The mainstream liberal media, some “liberal NGOs” and business leaders like Nedbank chairman Reuel Khoza are part of an “ideological third force” that fear black rule, Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande said on Friday.
Nzimande said in an opinion article on the ANC Today website that an “anti-majoritarian liberal offensive” was trying to assemble elite voices that appear to be “either neutral or authoritative” to try and discredit the ANC.
“The mainstream liberal media, some liberal NGOs, and of late business voices like Reuel Khoza, are all part of an 'ideological third force', decrying the 'threats' to our Constitution and 'lack' of leadership in the ANC and society,” he said.
“It is also important that our ANC and alliance cadres embark on sustained ideological work to expose the liberal offensive for what it is - fear of black majority rule.”
Khoza said last week that the country’s “strange breed” of leadership needed to adhere to the institutions that underpinned democracy.
The country's political leadership’s moral quotient was degenerating and the country was fast losing the checks and balances necessary to prevent a recurrence of the past, he said.
Nzimande said the print media in South Africa had effectively “become part of the political opposition”.
Bundles of free copies of The Star newspaper “completely ignored and left behind” at the end of the Chris Hani commemoration on Tuesday may have been an apt commentary on the standing of the print media and the attitude of “our cadres”, he said.
Nzimande said all institutions supporting democracy were either “affirmed or condemned” in the media purely on the basis of whether they found positively or negatively against the ANC.
It was for these reasons that ANC members had called upon courts and chapter nine institutions “to be alive to this anti-majoritarian agenda”.
“We want our courts and chapter nine institutions to do their work without fear or favour, and not to allow themselves to be used as platforms to advance party political agendas or be asked to adjudicate on matters that ordinarily belong to the electorate,” the minister said.
There was, he said, “absolutely nothing wrong” in amending the Constitution if it is was required or necessary.
“The Constitution, in fact, provides rules for its own amendment. That the ANC is projected as wanting to amend the Constitution in order to undermine the Constitution is part of an ideological blackmail by this ideological third force.” - Sapa