IMAGINE if I had started off this column by saying that attempts to justify the spending on Jacob Zuma’s residence at Nkandla were “lies perpetuated by black people”. The outcry and accusations of racism would almost certainly lead to the Man Friday column being terminated and would lead to me being fired from the Cape Times.
Quite justifiably, I would probably be charged in the Equality Court for making racist statements, and would in all probability be hauled before the SA Human Rights Commission.
I would be pilloried and my career as a journalist would be over.
The furore would be even bigger if I had continued, in this column, by saying that “when I was growing up, we used to call the newspapers black man’s lies… and they still are reporting for their black owners.”
Imagine the outcry if Mmusi Maimane, the DA’s Gauteng premier candidate, had to make a speech in which he said “we call on the working class – come out in your large numbers to deliver a massive electoral blow to this party of big capital and black privilege (the ANC). Electoral absenteeism simply plays into the hands of this retrograde anti-worker party.”
It would be political suicide.
But replace the word “black” in all the quotes above with “white” and I am in fact quoting three speeches made by SA Communist Party secretary-general and Higher Education Minister, Blade Nzimande, in the past week.
Sadly, this is the racist, bigoted, polarising discourse we now hear coming almost daily from leading members of the ANC and its allies. It is the same racist rhetoric that we are far more used to hearing from Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF cohorts.
Nkandla has become the ANC’s biggest electoral embarrassment, one that is likely to lead to it losing considerable traction in next month’s general election. And it is abundantly clear that most in the party have decided to close ranks around Jacob Zuma and tough it out.
That much was once again made abundantly clear in a speech Nzimande delivered yesterday at a Chris Hani memorial service at the Thomas Nkobi Memorial Cemetery in Boksburg, as reported on Umsebenzi Online, the SACP’s website:
“Of course we have expressed our concern that the timing of the release of the report of the Public Protector seems to have been aimed at influencing the 2014 electoral outcomes. Indeed, the DA and other opposition parties, who have nothing positive to say to our people, have used the Nkandla matter for narrow and opportunistic electioneering purposes. Fortunately our people, as we interact with them on the ground, are not being fooled by all this. They can see through this agenda of the opposition…” he said.
“We must defeat and expose all the hypocrisy around the Nkandla report, whose intention is not a principled fight against corruption, but a concerted attempt to discredit and dislodge the ANC from power.”
I dropped out of law school after failing Latin 1, and went on to do a lesser degree, but even as a layperson, I can clearly see that Nzimande is guilty of an offence under Section 9 of Act 23 of 1994, the Public Protector Act:
That section, “Contempt of Public Protector,” reads: “9. (1) No person shall – (a) insult the Public Protector or a Deputy Public Protector; (b) in connection with an investigation do anything which, if the said investigation had been proceedings in a court of law, would have constituted contempt of court.”
The Act goes on to say: “11. (1) Any person who contravenes the provisions of sections 3(14), 7(2) and 9 of this Act, or section 111(3) of the constitution, shall be guilty of an offence…” and “(4) Any person convicted of an offence in terms of this Act shall be liable to a fine not exceeding R40 000 or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding 12 months or to both such fine and such imprisonment.”
One assumes, then, that Nzimande and other leaders of the ANC who have publicly rubbished Thuli Madonsela and her report will, in fact, be charged with contempt of the Public Protector.
And for good measure, will someone please start hauling our new bunch of racist politicians, who have abandoned the principles of non-racialism that the Congress Movement fought so hard for, and which are enshrined in the Freedom Charter, before the Equality Court.
l Tony Weaver is going fishing. Man Friday will be back on May 16.