Johannesburg - Health union and ANC leader Fikile Majola has likened National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel’s “apartheid-blame” comments to the DA’s and the last apartheid president’s views. He described him as a frustrated and disillusioned “maverick” who still regards himself as a “super minister”.
Majola, in an opinion piece, was reacting to Manuel’s address at the conference of government senior managers this week in which he said “we cannot continue to blame apartheid for our failings as a state. After 19 years in power we cannot plead inexperience”.
The general secretary of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union said Manuel “interferes everywhere and has fallen into the trap of believing that the National Planning Commission is a super-ministry and he is a super-minister”.
“His statements are no different from those of the DA, with its ‘open-society vision’, and the De Klerk Foundation with its insistence that we need to serve the constitution and not the other way round.
“This creates a false impression that since we have a majority government, apartheid’s legacy has faded away and are all equal,” wrote Majola. It is feared that the harsh criticism by Majola and other left leaders in the ANC-led alliance could prod Manuel to act on his earlier threat to quit.
The Sunday Independent understands that Manuel had once threatened to quit in 2011 when the ruling party chastised him for acting like a “free agent” after the minister described former government spokesman Jimmy Manyi as a “worst order racist”.
Manyi, while heading the Labour Department, said there was oversupply of coloureds in the Western Cape.
President Jacob Zuma stepped in and called for restraint, a move that was interpreted by Manuel as failure to defend him, according to a reliable government official who refused to be named because of the political nature of the subject.
Manuel’s comments could be contrasted with the views of President Zuma, who has blamed apartheid for most socio-economic woes – from violence, unemployment, education to poor services.
Manuel has declined to comment. Majola is one of the Cosatu leaders who supported Zuma’s second term as party president and his scathing attack on Manuel could be interpreted as representing a particular view in the ruling ANC and the labour federation.
Majola, who was elected to the ANC national executive committee (NEC) at the Mangaung conference where Manuel declined nomination, said: “Sometimes it is hard not to draw the conclusion that behind this apparently new found ‘service delivery activism’ from Trevor Manuel, lurks some political frustration. He has always preferred to be the one who sets the agenda.”
“His decision to refuse the nomination to the ANC NEC can be easily seen as a ploy to get out of the confines of the collective leadership and continue to act as an independent maverick.”
He described Manuel as acting like “a free agent that is unaccountable to the ANC”, cautioning that while the ANC had adopted the National Development Plan as an umbrella vision, this did not make the National Planning Commission in the Presidency a super ministry.
“We (are) also unapologetic that government should be accountable to the ruling party, the ANC, and implement alliance-adopted policies,” Majola said.
Majola said “we cannot be unapologetic about cadre deployment”.
Interestingly, a section in the ANC once wanted to boot Manuel out of the deployment committee in 2009. Manuel this week had cautioned against blurring the lines between party and state.
“You are civil servants, who are meant to serve all citizens irrespective of political persuasion. You are accountable to your political head and you remain accountable to the respective legislature. I repeat, you are not accountable to the ruling party, certainly not directly and certainly not as civil servants. There are proper channels within the ruling party to deal with areas of concern and areas of weak performance.”
Manuel was however defended by the ANC, with spokesman Keith Khoza cautioning his union comrades to note the context of Manuel’s remarks:
“The minister said apartheid could not be blamed for everything and used as an excuse. In so doing he had not discounted that South Africa was still dealing with the legacy of the past. It was important to reflect on one’s weaknesses and to accept these challenges to redress them. “If you look at poverty, it’s a legacy of apartheid… but if we are talking about departments not getting clean audits, we can’t blame that on apartheid,” Khoza said.
But the National Union of Mineworkers general secretary Frans Baleni said “our understanding of what Trevor was saying is that we don’t do nothing and then blame apartheid, at the same time we can’t say the ills of apartheid have been eliminated”.
Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim said: “This man championed neo-liberal policies when he was minister of finance!”
Additional reporting by Moshoeshoe Monare.
Sunday Independent