Why I won't do #BlackMonday or #StayAwayFriday

Published Apr 3, 2017

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The only democracy is a working democracy and that means all of us making it work together in our own industries. That is what scares Zuma and his band of merry men and women the most, writes Adrian Ephraim.

Is it me or was April Fool’s Day cancelled? What is April Fool’s Day in a world of fake news, Donald Trump and Jacob Zuma anyway? Tuesday, I guess. Maybe we couldn’t spin a more outrageously compelling tale than this Orwellian nightmare South Africa woke up to last Friday. Bad is good, but good is not so bad. I digress.

In our scramble to mobilise anger and Twitter followers in the wake of Jacob Zuma’s midnight ministerial massacre last week, we must be careful not to delegitimise the very institutions of democracy that Ahmed Kathrada and co gifted us. The Constitution, National Treasury, the courts, free media, Parliament and even the Office of the Presidency are all institutions of democracy worthy of saving – no matter who occupies them. Remove whom you want to from office, but for heaven’s sake keep these entities alive, because we need them. For example, more and more our courts are coming to our rescue as the last line of defence against rampant political factionalism. They’ve stopped Zuma and those who would try to exploit loopholes. The courts have even allowed us to possess weed legally, so we can stop pretending.

We must also be wary of those who would try to use these uncertain times to further a more sinister agenda.

Calls to withhold tax and restrict the media are not only ignorant, but they play into the hands of the usurpers of power.

“Don’t pay tax. Put your money in a trust fund.” Erm, whose trust fund? Where? Really? We’re running 419 scams now to save democracy? Calm down, people. There is fake news and there is faker news, and now more than ever we need a free media to tell the difference.

A regulated media blindly chasing audience and revenue without interrogating the facts is not helpful to society and it may muddy the message, which would suit Zuma. A poorer National Treasury cannot feed the hungry and a dysfunctional Parliament cannot chew up and spit out a president undeserving of the title. There’d be chaos.

How do we deal with a legitimate leader who is engaging in acts that appear less than savoury but not illegal and certainly not outside the ambit of his powers (according to the Constitution, which, ironically, he has soiled)?

President Jacob Zuma. Picture: Themba Hadebe/AP

Reshuffling his cabinet is Zuma’s prerogative, yet it appears to have offended “most” South Africans, if my timelines and media consumption is anything to go by. Is it? We have no data to back this up of course. Public sentiment and cold hard numbers don’t always look each other in the eyes.

But daily I hear about campaigns to stop the government, petitions to force Zuma to resign, Facebook posts to withhold taxes, ban ANN7 and The New Age, wear black on Monday, stay at home on Friday and show up on the streets whenever. There are only two things I can agree with on that list; we must voice our frustrations and we must march on the streets and shout in the face of power; and secondly, I look great in black. Oh, and when last did signing a petition ever work, for anything?

I cringed when former finance minister Pravin Gordhan, at the press conference in Pretoria last week, called out and roasted ANN7 for their shocking reporting over months. He had every right to of course, and the Gupta-owned channel probably deserved it too. They have been ungovernable in their attack on Gordhan in the past year. Nevertheless, I cringed as a journalist. In 2010 Julius Malema singled out a BBC journalist at Luthuli House a few years ago, and we all jumped to the reporter’s defence. Should the media freedom bodies not have defended ANN7? Asking for a friend.

Mcebisi Jonas and Pravin Gordhan at a media briefing at the National Treasury in Pretoria. Photo: Jacques Naude/Independent Media

I don’t have many answers today, but ANN7 had chosen a side and they had every right to, no matter how we feel about them. It happens all over the world, Fox News, Breitbart, Daily Mail, to name a few. We have a right not to buy what they’re selling. That’s generally how everything works, all over the world. There are probably some good journalists at ANN7 just trying to do their jobs, and who don’t have the pension cushion or trust fund or family support to just walk away from a job and take up positions on higher moral ground.

I will criticise poor journalism, but sometimes life is just about making ends meet and being fortunate enough to have a job. It’s not an excuse – it’s life, with room for improvement.

When we the media sold you on the idea of impartiality we meant well, and we still try to maintain a noble sense of objectivity for the most part and for most people – except maybe Zuma. He makes it difficult to be balanced, so most media houses choose the side of what we believe to be good; backing the poor and the powerless (and the trending) and speaking clichés to power. It feels like the right thing to do. This is why I won’t stay away from work on Friday, because journalists have a job to do – now more than ever.

But these are dangerous times, because no matter how we feel about our president he is the leader of a democratic country and elected by the ruling party by the majority of voters.

To suggest that ANN7 should be banned is venturing down a slippery slope that probably suits an underfire Zuma-led government. Make no mistake we are approaching a dictatorship, but there are still some reasonable women and men around. We dare not hand over the reins of a hard-fought democracy to the lunatics on the inside and the colonisers fighting in the shadows outside.

There is a smugness about a protest that implores people to dress in black, like they work at Woolworths. Clearly they haven’t taken into account people who have to wear uniforms to work, and people in uniforms are generally the lowest paid among us. We now get to see the middle class shake their heads at the ANC and say “We knew it. We knew they would f**k up. This is what happens, you see?”

Fighting a common Zuma enemy in the Shosholoza struggle like it’s 1995 again doesn’t absolve us from dealing with the issues that will remain with us long after Zuma goes: racism, hate crimes, land reform, unemployment, cultural appropriation and privilege. These issues are in danger of being relegated while we pursue one man who sat on his hands for most of presidency, doing the three-legged race from one scandal to another without addressing any real issues we suffer from. Zuma seems to have become the proxy for black rule and incompetence, when in fact he has demonstrated that he is anything but representative of the majority in South Africa.

The unemployment rate in South Africa went up to 27.1% in the third quarter of 2016 from 26.6 percent in the previous period, the highest unemployment rate since 2004. Right now it still hovers around 26,5%. The economy has shrunk. GDP growth in South Africa averaged 2.90% from 1993 until 2016, reaching an all time high of 7.60% in the fourth quarter of 1994 and a record low of -6.10 % in the first quarter of 2009. It grew 0,3% in the last quarter of 2016.

Now do you think that bringing the economy grinding to a halt will affect Zuma or the exploited workforce? Is it worth leaving National Treasury and all government departments paralysed to deliver life-saving services to millions? Will you give your domestic worker, cleaner and petrol attendant the day off? It will be a long weekend, of course you will.

Today I wear Black to support #Blackmonday. I Love South Africa & in solidarity we can demand a better South Africa for ALL 🇿🇦 #nowornever pic.twitter.com/dsybKDyRgx

— Roxi Watson BSc MSc (@relishwithroxi) April 3, 2017

We should have marched en masse when millions of grant recipients were at risk of not receiving their live giving money.

Another reminder: we do not live in an equal society, we live in a South Africa where power relations are as old as colonialism and slavery in some instances. Hyperbole maybe, but we’ve all heard the stories of black people being humiliated and tortured in the name of white supremacy.

People will lose their jobs if we stop working. Withholding taxes will cause companies to cut costs, and they usually cut from the bottom. Calling for news organisations to be banned is reckless and anti-democratic. And this is why I will go to work as normal.

Staff at National Treasury, in government have to work harder than before because they now operate within a kleptocracy. The only democracy is a working democracy and that means all of us making it work together in our own industries. That is what scares Zuma and his band of merry men and women the most.

* Adrian Ephraim is the Group Digital Content Editor and Editor of African Independent

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