Lebogang Seale should have taken off his anti-ANC goggles before committing pen to paper, says Zizi Kodwa.
Johannesburg - In his comment article “ All the president’s men”, Lebogang Seale makes some fascinating, yet dangerous assumptions about the state of our movement, the ANC.
We would dismiss him as not worthy of our comment if the issues he was raising were not so serious and his version of the truth not as wanting.
The vitriol he dishes out to the ANC brings his objectivity into question, particularly so when he proudly describes himself, on his Twitter page, as a “multi-award winning senior 4th estate member for The Star”.
In the last century, the ANC has grown from strength to strength, finding expression in the everyday lives of the majority of South Africans as their political home.
Latterly, this has been affirmed by the resounding victory the ANC continued to register at the polls over the past 20 years.
To suggest that the 62 percent of voters that have returned the ANC to power in the 2014 elections are “fanatical devotees” is not only an insult to the electorate, but arrogance of the worst order.
But then again, as a senior journalist, Seale is not as naive as he would have us believe, but deliberately twists the ANC statement and the secretary-general’s comments to suit his interpretation.
The patronage he so eloquently preaches against can equally be ascribed to the brand of journalism he practices, gutter journalism akin to that practised by embedded journalists serving a particular master.
President Jacob Zuma was never elected by a faction but by the totality of the membership of the ANC in a democratic process. To invoke Plato in the manner the writer does is rather disingenuous, and exposes the levels of desperation he is prepared to stoop to in order to cast aspersions on the leadership of the ANC.
Defending the ANC leadership, including its president, is no sycophancy. An attack on the head of the national executive is an attack on the executive branch of the government. Suggesting ministers should contradict or even attack the president is a level of desperation that exposes the writer’s disdain of the ANC.
The ANC statement recognises in the main the levels to which Parliament has descended into chaos and discord. A display of crude gestures, which amount to expletives, orchestrating levels of anarchy that effectively stall Parliament from executing its function of making laws, and debating matters that affect the everyday lives of our people and unruly conduct have no place in our constitutional democracy.
Any South African who has genuine commitment to our constitutional democracy, including the media establishment, should raise alarm and condemn these acts in the strongest way possible. Seale and his ilk choose to behave like the three monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil when it suits them.
The constitution enjoins the members of the executive to account, collectively and individually, to Parliament in exercising their powers and performing their functions. The role of Parliament in this instance is to create an enabling environment for the members of the executive to account. If Parliament is unable to create such an environment as a result of unbridled hooliganism, then Parliament itself becomes a farce.
This is a state of affairs the ANC will not tolerate. Every MP, across party lines, has a responsibility and an obligation to uphold the dignity and decorum of Parliament, and ensure it is able to discharge its constitutional mandate diligently.
Perhaps the writer should have taken off his anti-ANC goggles before committing pen to paper and taken a sharper perspective of the totality of our body politic and ask the hard questions any objective journalist would have.
Why has our opposition evolved into fascist organisations that have no tolerance for democratic practice? Why do they shamelessly express disdain towards those who have been given an overwhelming mandate to lead the country?
Seale’s analysis is at best pedestrian and at worst desperate, devoid of any factual basis.
The ANC is on record as having decried patronage politics and successive conferences passed resolutions condemning this cancer eating into the very fabric of our body politic.
The writer acknowledges this, yet in the same breath opportunistically links this malice to the Zuma administration.
Unfortunately, Seale joins the chorus of those who have abandoned logic and sacrificed principles in the interests of masters who harbour preconceived views about the character of the ANC.
Seale is gallant in the offer of his unsolicited remedy to the woes of the ANC, both real and imaginary. But alas, all he is offering is nothing short of a poisoned chalice.
In any democratic society, the role of the media is to be an agent of change and to support active citizenry by building the strands that make up the moral fibre of society.
This is notwithstanding the often contradicting views of the role the media should play in society. However, it can never be that the media establishment descends to levels of anarchy and discord such as those we have seen at the infancy of our fifth democratic Parliament.
At the face of it, some sections of the media have not escaped the temptation to advance partisan views and turn a blind eye to the dangerous antics of the DA and the EFF that seek to undermine democracy.
Despite these setbacks, we still believe ours has what it takes to become a vibrant media that promotes a plurality of views that promote our constitutional values, integrity and robust debate.
* Zizi Kodwa is ANC spokesman.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
The Star