I’M WRITING this column from a hotel room in Lusaka, the Zambian capital. As with many South Africans I grew up with, Lusaka holds a sentimental place in our imagination.
This is where, at least in our heads, the brains trust of our liberation movement plotted the march to our freedom. It is also from here that I gather that the SABC’s acting group chief executive, Jimi Matthews, has quit his post.
Matthews, a well-respected and experienced journalist, was unambiguous about why he was walking away from the job.
“What’s happening at the SABC is wrong,” he said in a widely published letter. It doesn’t get clearer than that.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, a certain Hlaudi Motsoeneng, nominally the group chief operating officer, but in fact the Führer, has been riding roughshod over the public broadcaster.
As we speak, three senior journalists have been suspended for questioning Motsoeneng’s dictates. More could join them, because some of their colleagues have written to Motsoeneng demanding answers for why their colleagues have been put on ice.
Lukhanyo Calata, son of slain Struggle icon Fort Calata, has put his job on the line as a parliamentary reporter at the public broadcaster by publicly repudiating Motsoeneng’s decrees.
His father and his grandfather, James Arthur Calata, must be proud that the struggle for what’s right continues to the third generation of the Calata men.
Throughout this, all the governing party, which plotted the freedom and democracy that Motsoeneng is slowly but surely corroding, could say is that Matthews could’ve been more discreet in saying why he quit.
At this moment I have to wonder if my thoughts about what was happening in Lusaka all those years ago was not mere youthful fantasy. How is it that the party that sold thousands of young men and women the dream of freedom – a party that sold the idea of martyrdom for freedom – could be the same party that will let a Motsoeneng do as he pleases with our freedom once we have it.
By “our” freedom I include you. Freedom is indivisible. Media freedom is a societal freedom and when it’s taken away, it’s taken away from everyone.
I have to feel pity for those who, unlike me, were in Lusaka under duress; who thought being here would advance the struggle for freedom, because surely this can’t be the freedom they fought for.
There is no way that Motsoeneng can continue to run the show, meaning to suppress labour rights and stifle media freedom, without believing he has the backing of the political powers that be.
As for the governing party, they must note another Zambian development I’ve noticed in my time here.
The country is going to general elections in August.
The organisation that led Zambia to independence, United National Independence Party (Unip) – the party of Kenneth Kaunda – is not even in contention to be the official opposition.
Having ruled Zambia from 1964, the party thought it was invincible, until it was thrown out in 1991.
I’m sure that at the height of their power, Unip couldn’t have imagined being irrelevant, as it is today.
Common sense must however tell you that you can’t continue to take people for granted. They will at some point make different choices from those they have made before, regardless how beloved you once were. Back to my sentimental Lusaka, I asked my host here about the ANC office in Lusaka. I didn’t say so, but I hoped it would be some kind of a shrine paying tribute to Zambia’s commitment to freedom. It is a nondescript office. It is nothing to write home about.
My host answered the question my bewildered face asked. “It’s the responsibility of South Africans to preserve their legacy.”
Perhaps therein lies the answers to many of my questions and anxieties about why the governing party has sacrificed the people it fought for to the whims of a veritable clown drunk with power.
Maybe the ANC didn’t leave the building but left its soul in Lusaka too. How else can one explain the party being incensed that Matthews’s letter was public, but has nothing to say about the content?
As things stand, the ANC must choose between Motsoeneng and the freedoms it fought so hard for.