The ANC stayed out of the fight between Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel and government spokesman Jimmy Manyi on Wednesday as Cosatu sided with Manuel and President Jacob Zuma called for “restraint and order” .
Manyi’s comments - made last year as president of the Black Management Forum and when he was also director-general of the Labour Department - about an “over-supply” of coloured people in the Western Cape and Manuel’s scathing response continued to reverberate around the country.
Speaking from France, where Zuma is on a state visit, Presidency spokesman Zizi Kodwa said on Wednesday the president “assures that the government will not do anything that undermines the spirit and the trust in our constitution … or do anything that reverses our collective achievement against our racial and painful past”.
The president “calls for restraint” and urged that “no persons or group must use race for political grandstanding, as this undermines our achievements”, Kodwa said.
He said the Presidency would hear the views of both men before any decisions were taken.
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe suggested that Manyi had acted without the party’s blessing.
“He does not want our view. If he wanted our view he would have written a letter to us. He went into the open. We won’t join the match, we won’t get into that mud with him.”
Mantashe cautioned against reducing Manuel’s criticism to the views of a “coloured leader”, saying: “Trevor Manuel is a national leader of the ANC.”
In an open letter this week, Manuel branded Manyi a “worst-order racist” and compared him to apartheid architect HF Verwoerd.
Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said he agreed that Manyi’s statement about an “over-concentration” of coloured people in the Western Cape was racist.
He said further comments along this line would call into question Manyi’s fitness for high office.
“I agree with Manuel. He is right. That remark of Jimmy’s was a most unfortunate statement ever to be made in a democracy,” Vavi said.
“It is a bizarre statement. I don’t know what he smoked to make that statement … It is absolutely racist, in fact, you can’t put it in any other words.”
Manuel said on Wednesday night that South Africa’s constitution was not “forced down the throat of liberation organisations” and when its principles were being “thrown overboard”, someone had to “give the wake-up call”. He was commenting on his open letter to Manyi, carried in the Cape Times on Wednesday.
Manuel was speaking in Johannesburg after briefing editors on the work being done by the National Planning Commission, of which he is in charge.
He said one of the battles under way in South Africa was “against forgetting”.
“The constitution that we have in this country is not something that was forced down the throat of liberation organisations by a determined apartheid regime,” Manuel said.
People needed to be reminded that its foundations had been laid by the late ANC leader Oliver Tambo.
The Freedom Charter opened by saying that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it” and closed by saying “we will fight for those freedoms side by side”.
“It’s the principle that’s informed my life,” he said.
Manuel said afterwards that he had written the letter to Manyi not as a cabinet minister, but as a compatriot.
The DA added fuel to the fire on Wednesday by releasing a recording made last year of Manyi saying Indians had “bargained their way to the top” in business.
In addressing the Durban Chamber of Business in February last year in his capacity as president of the Black Management Forum, Manyi suggested that Indians w ere over-represented in management positions in the private and public sectors.
Manyi said while Indians accounted for only 3 percentof the national population, they occupied 5.9 percent of senior management positions. “I call it the power of bargaining. Indians have bargained their way to the top,” Manyi said.
The comment drew laughter from the audience at the time, but DA federal chairman Wilmot James said on Wednesday it was no laughing matter.
“It was an off-colour joke in very poor taste. It confirms prejudicial stereotypes … and is like saying successful women sleep their way to the top. It is nothing more than bigotry and prejudice disguised as humour that relies on old racist clichés left over from the apartheid era.”
Manyi was talking his Durban audience through equity statistics, noting that while Africans made up the majority of the population, they occupied a relatively small number of senior management positions.
“You should be having 74.1 percent Africans at the top (of management), but we are sitting at 13.6 percent,” he said.
“We should be having 10.8 percent coloureds at the top. They are sitting at 4.7 percent. Indians, they should be having only 3 percent. They are sitting at 5.9 percent. I call it the power of bargaining. Indians have bargained their way to the top.”
Manyi said the economically active white population accounted for 12 percent of the national population and for 72.8 percent of management positions. He emphasised that his views were aimed at encouraging transformation in the workplace.
Manyi confirmed on Wednesday that he had made the remarks in his Durban address.
“The remarks were made in jest; just a jest, on a light note. I was quoting figures at the time.”
Manyi said he would not be responding to Manuel.
Meanwhile, Manuel’s letter continued to send shockwaves across the political spectrum. The ANC Youth League sided with Manyi and accused Manuel of serving the “political agenda of right-wing political forces opposed to the ANC”.
“Typically, Trevor Manuel defines himself outside the ANC and subjectively attacks Jimmy Manyi, accuses him of racism as if Jimmy Manyi is an outcast, the league said.
The Black Management Forum’s deputy president, Tembakazi Mnyaka, expressed “utter shock and disappointment at the conduct of the minister in the Presidency”.
“The forum finds it unbecoming of a cabinet minister who holds such a respectable position to unleash a vitriolic tirade and personal attack on Mr Manyi,” she said.
Former cabinet minister Kader Asmal urged the government to make a moral choice between the views of Manuel and those of Manyi.
“Minister Manuel deserves the support and praise of all right-thinking South Africans,” Asmal said.
“The choice facing us is very clear: do we stand behind the humane and generous values of Minister Manuel, or do we, by staying silent, lend our support to the mischievous and dangerous notions of Mr Manyi?”
Cosatu provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich called for an investigation into Manyi’s comments. He said the attitude of the former director-general of labour might have affected laws drafted while he was in that post.
“This raises serious questions in his attitude and orientation to the race issue in South Africa. Cosatu calls for an investigation into the conduct of Jimmy Manyi as it casts serious aspersions on his suitability for senior public office,” said Ehrenreich.
The ANC’s leader in the provincial legislature, Lynne Brown, said Manyi’s comments were being used for political capital with an election around the corner.
“I don’t know what (Manyi’s) intentions were,” she said.
She said Manyi’s apology should have been the end of the story and that South Africa faced greater challenges.
“We need to look at the general social cohesion in our country, we need to make sure people realise that we are one nation. The skewed nature of our economy needs levelling.”
ANC Western Cape secretary Songezo Mjongile said there was “nothing really new to add” to Manuel’s letter.
“The urgent task is to build non-racialism and unity among our people. To achieve that we’ll need to bring them to the economic mainstream through affirmative action.”
Mjongile said Manyi’s apology had been sufficient and had been accepted by the ANC. His utterances were “water under the bridge”.
Allan Boesak, former ANC provincial chairman and now dean of the International Institute for Race, Reconciliation and Social Justice at the University of the Free State, agreed with Manuel.
“Trevor Manuel is absolutely correct. Manyi is a blatant racist who shows an appalling ignorance of history,” said Boesak. “How the ANC responds to Manuel will not tell us how it will respond to coloured people but how it responds to non-racialism.”
Boesak said Manyi could prove to be an “acid-test” for non-racism and the integrity of South Africa’s struggle against apartheid. “This issue will not die. We need a far stronger action than just a wishy-washy apology. I expect the ANC to take leadership.”
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