Many South Africans are pinning their hopes on a looming post-Zuma era, which they say will give this country a chance to breathe from the daily scandals and the reckless decision-making.
Many, including some among the ANC leadership ranks, have gone over the edge screaming for this post-Zuma era to come sooner rather than later, so that the period of renewal can be much longer with an eye on the overwhelming ANC electoral victory in 2019.
There may well be something to these wishes and aspirations.
The best way, however, to measure whether we should look forward to a certain utopia post-Zuma is to measure that against our recent past and break down the nostalgia into hard cold facts.
On February 9, 2008, The Guardian newspaper, analysing Thabo Mbeki’s presidency, said Mbeki’s story is a "Shakespearean tale of power struggles, paranoia, betrayals, secrets, lies and, above all, hubris".
On a different day, the same Guardian would say: "Aids, Zimbabwe and an economic policy that lost South Africa half a million jobs are the three shadows that have haunted Mbeki’s presidency and cost him support he could ill afford to lose". If you read this line carefully, given the current narrative about the current leadership, you can easily replace Mbeki with Jacob Zuma and the story will sound exactly the same.
A 2006 Sunday Times editorial, two weeks after the Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge saga, went on overdrive trying to portray Mbeki as a psychopathic leader who encouraged sycophantic culture.
This editorial by one Mondli Makhanya, at least according to one Master's student who was doing research at the time, was one of no fewer than 30 out of 42 similarly vicious editorials that the Sunday Times had fed us, since 2006, of this Mbeki who was destroying the state and its institutions.
Given the current media narrative of "Mbeki the angel" and "Zuma the devil," why is the narrative about both men so similar (when they are in office) and so vicious. Is it because ANC leaders are the same power-hungry and divisive figures, or is it because there is a calculated and intentional plan to sell black pathology and throw mud at black leaders with the hope such mud will eventually stick?
Or better yet, is it because while political leaders come and go, media leaders and their henchmen remain with us a lifetime?
This 2006 Master's research went further: "Over and above the editorial since August 2006, Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya had at least penned 22 of 42 articles in his own name dedicated directly and otherwise to hostile attacks against this one institution and individual, Mbeki."
In the course of his Master's research the student found this was consistent with Makhanya’s tenure at Mail & Guardian, where along with the paper's infamous "is Mbeki fit to rule" (of which read this man is not fit to rule) Makhanya dedicated no less than 30% of his editorial to mincemeating Mbeki.
The same obsession with Mbeki applied to then Business Day writer Karima Brown, who wrote in 2006 that Mbeki’s "sell-by date’’ was written on his back, and columnist Xolela Mangcu, whose obsession also saw him calling for Mbeki to step down back in 2006.
That goes for journalism professor Anton Harber and editor Peter Bruce. Most of these people are still looming large in our media space, still selling the same story, just different leaders.
On October 20, 2007, SABC and Sanef held a conference on "media and society," which arose from claims in the Sunday Times relating to the conduct of then and late health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang while in hospital, and an investigation into the disappearance of her medical file.
The conference was also fuelled by the said looming arrest of both Makhanya and his journalist Jocelyn Maker, who were said to be accused of stealing and publishing this health file of the minister.
The looming arrests were of course dismissed by the NPA and were ridiculed by many speakers at the conference, including then-SABC CEO Dali Mpofu and writer Ronald Suresh, a conference Makhanya had decided to skip.
At that conference, both Roberts and Mpofu went to town with various editorial positions of the then leaders of media houses, who still cast a long shadow, even today.
This included Makhanya (who he called a "colonial creature”), then Business Day writers Brown and Vukani Mde and Bruce, Mangcu, Harber, former Progressive Party MP Helen Suzman (a "South African illiberal”), author and journalist William Mervin Gumede and Wits academic Achille Mbembe.
In a veiled reference to Makhanya, who was not present, Suresh referred to journalists who used “cruise missile journalism” then run, or “sit in their office and pontificate” without attending the scheduled Friday's debate.
Mpofu called freedom of the press and public interest a "red herring".
“The press is a machine, it doesn't have any freedom. Freedom belongs to the people, they have a right to make choices,” Mpofu said.
Then SABC group executive for news and current affairs Snuki Zikalala offered the ultimate indictment to his fellow colleagues, expressing his concern over some editors, saying: “I don't think some of my colleagues are interested in building this nation.” Whether these views were correct or not, they highlight how deep and overwhelming the toxicity that was being bought and sold by the media and friends about Mbeki and his administration, something that has not changed a bit in 2017.
How then can South Africans expect a country's renewal after Zuma if the narrative about both the ANC and black people has been consistent for the last 20 years and is cast in stone, a black pathology and black stereotypes that must always be sold to an existing and profitable market? There seems to have always been a decision, taken somewhere, that the media must try by all means to make the "present unpleasant" so that everyone can immediately forget the past and who is responsible for it.
The chamber of liberal white applause does not want to hear about the past; they want to be told it is the weaknesses in the state that have hindered the speed with which social change can be implemented, that is the news we are prepared to buy, so sell us this news. The chamber of liberal white applause wants to hear that the "socio-economic disparities that reflect apartheid racial patterns" are not the problem, but "greed, corruption, crass materialism and conspicuous consumption” is where the problem comes from, so sell us this news.
So the idea is that we need a media that will lull us into forgetting how the past affects the present, but point to us at every turn what is wrong with our ANC-led state, irrespective of who leads, sells us this news; we won't only buy them, we will buy the whole company.
The African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist, Malcolm X, was right then and is right today that: “The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”
There will not be a political renewal in this country until there is a deep and thorough renewal of the media.
There has hardly been a change at the top of the media food chain - same voices, reshuffled around among media houses, still spitting the same vitriol. It's almost insanity to expect different results.
It's time for young people to take over the media houses and renew the minds and hearts of our people.
Diko is the spokesperson of the ANC in the Western Cape