WHY is it that the ANC and its alliance partners seem to reserve the
harshest language when dealing with each other and their members these days?
Just this week, the first salvo was fired by former cabinet minister Kader
Asmal, who called Justice Minister Jeff Radebe politically illiterate.
Asmal also said he hopes he would be dead the day Deputy Police Minister
Fikile Mbalula becomes secretary general of the ANC.
The retort was equally harsh, with Mbalula calling Asmal a lunatic, and
the former glorious fighters of MK wishing Asmal a speedy death.
Then came the shock announcement that director general and head of the policy unit in the Presidency, Khathutshelo Netshitenzhe, was leaving
government. A statement issued by the Young Communist League in Gauteng
effectively said good riddance.
Many people outside the ANC and its structures, both prior and post its
unbanning in 1990, know the intolerance that characterised what was
supposed to be political battle for support. Whether you go to Soweto, New
Brighton or KZN, you will find scars on non-ANC people who dared to be
different. If you look closely, you will even see graves.
But that harsh treatment was reserved for those outside "the family".
That
is no longer so. The harshest language now is reserved for dissenting
voices within, where, despite the rhetoric of the freeing of space for
debate post-Polokwane, the reality seems oh so different.
And indeed maybe it is good that the harsh treatment for dissenters is no
longer reserved for only non-ANC members, it is, if you like, the
levelling of the intolerance field, where it no longer matters if you are
family or not, as long as you do not toe the dominant line, you are enemy.
Take the situation of Netshitenzhe. Committed to the core to the ANC,
capable and extremely knowledgeable in the work he was doing, how is it
that simply because pre-Polokwane he sided with Thabo Mbeki, a situation
is now created that finds him heading for the Unemployment Insurance Fund
queue?
Put simply, how is it that an ANC government can find nothing for a
Netshitenzhe to do at this time in the development of our democracy, even
if there is restructuring in government?
In another era, King Moshoeshoe, the founder of the Basotho nation,
defeated Mzilikazi at Thaba Bosiou. As the hungry Mzilikazi and his war
weary soldiers headed home, Moshoeshoe sent them food and cattle for the
road. It was magnanimity in victory that understood that to differ, even
at the point of physical war, does not necessarily mean annihilation of
the vanquished.
Netshitenzhe has penned many of the policy documents of the ANC. He would
have been the major contributor to the green paper on how the planning
commission in the Presidency is supposed to work.
It is this green paper
that saw Planning Minister Trevor Manuel called a relic of a bygone Mbeki
era by the new spokesperson of the socialists, Cosatu president Sdumo
Dlamini.
Clearing the deck
Dlamini essentially also said the same about Netshitenzhe when the latter
dared to say the ANC should not micro manage its deployees in government.
What is at the centre of this new hatred for dissenting views? The
ascendancy of those in Cosatu and the SACP in the ANC, arising from their
contribution to getting President Jacob Zuma elected ANC president in
Polokwane, is being used to entrench their views within the ANC.
This is a natural development.
You cannot expect socialists within the
alliance to work so hard for a man and not then push for final policy
victory. The coming summit of the alliance is going to be a site for a
serious struggle because the socialists will want the ANC to become a red
party. They feel they have worked for it, and are entitled to their
victory.
However, the ANC is a middle-of-centre church with nationalists and
capitalists who think the rhetoric of the socialists is a blast from an
ideological past that has failed internationally. While appreciating the
work that socialists do within the ANC, they see the ANC as a separate
organisation whose character must not be changed.
The removal of Netshitenzhe from government is one way of clearing the
deck.
The next DG responsible for policy will report to Cosatu's cabinet
deployee, economic planning minister Ebrahim Patel, and that person will
have to have the blessing of Cosatu and the SACP. That move will put
socialists at the centre of government policy development.
When you have fought as hard as the socialists have, you deserve your
victory, as they are savouring it right now. But does victory have to be
so brutal in its language in dealing with those members of the same
organisation who differ?
- Fin24.com