SA is a land of short memories and reinvention. Just this week South Africans were treated to a master class of how this can be done when ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu and SA Communist Party (SACP) general-secretary Blade Nzimande became champions of free expression.
This followed the disruption of the Sandton launch of investigative journalist Pieter-Louis Myburgh’s Ace Magashule exposé, Gangster State. Protesters supporting the ANC secretary-general disrupted the launch, chanting Magashule’s name, singing songs and tearing up a copy of the book. Some were wearing ANC T-shirts and brandishing posters saying “Hands off our SG” and “Stratcom State”.
The ANC Youth League in the Free State, the province Magashule ran as his personal fiefdom for almost a decade and that is the subject of Myburgh’s book, also issued a statement saying they would host a book burning ceremony. The governing party put out a statement condemning the disruption and call to burn the book, days after labeling it “fake news” and typical of “stratcom”.
This was followed by another attempt at damage control, with Magashule distancing himself from the protesters. But the most vocal disapproval within the party’s leadership ranks came from Mthembu and Nzimande, two men who during former president Jacob Zuma’s tenure were far from quick to defend freedom of speech and free expression.
In 2012, in his then capacity as ANC national spokesperson, Mthembu called for a boycott of City Press after the newspaper published a picture of Brett Murray’s painting The Spear on its website. He stood outside the Johannesburg High Court, where the ANC and Zuma had lodged an application to have the picture removed from the website, chanting “Don’t buy City Press, don’t buy.”
During the week of protests against the newspaper, editions were reportedly burnt in protest. ANC members marched on the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, where the painting was displayed, demanding that it be removed. The painting was eventually defaced by two men who entered the gallery and painted a red cross over Zuma’s face and threw black paint over it.
Nzimande had called for the painting to be destroyed. The SACP general-secretary went as far as to call for a law to be promulgated prohibiting people from insulting a sitting president. Hardly the language of a free speech and expression advocate. Yet seven years later, both men seem to have become fervent constitutionalists.
Taking to Twitter, Mthembu said he would mobilise the ANC’s national working committee to “urgently bring those involved in the disruption … before a disciplinary committee. Those thugs have brought the ANC name into disrepute. They have trashed our hard won democracy”.
Mthembu went on to say their actions were “criminal, anti-democracy and anti-freedom of speech”. He is right, of course, but hypocritical given his conduct during the Zuma painting saga.
At Chris Hani’s commemoration earlier this week, Nzimande said people had a right to raise objections and criticise the book, but they did not have the right to disrupt the launch and threaten to burn the book. The same man who called for The Spear, someone’s creative work, to be destroyed.
Now Zuma is gone, allegiances have changed. The ANC is trying to “renew itself”, and so too, it seems, many of its leaders. Mthembu and Nzimande are not the only politicians trying to reinvent themselves, and in the process revising their past conduct. There are many others from all political parties, including EFF leader Julius Malema, who is now apparently a champion anti-corruption fighter.
Malema once faced fraud, corruption, money-laundering and racketeering charges. It was alleged that he made nearly R4m from corrupt activities. The charges were dropped in 2015 after the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) told the court it was not ready to proceed with the case. A judge in the Polokwane High Court at the time said there had been too many delays and that the NPA could reinstate the charges when it was ready.
This never happened. Malema subsequently led the charge against Zuma and corruption in the ANC. The EFF has painted itself as a fighter against corruption even as it battles allegations of links to the looting of VBS Mutual Bank.
What all this tells us is that politicians are fickle and politics devoid of any real principles. But also, that we as South Africans have short memories. We are too quick to praise people when they say things we like, regardless of what has happened before.
It is now an election year and political leaders across the spectrum are once again reinventing themselves as they try to convince the electorate to give them their vote. It is our short memories and their ability to reinvent themselves that keep so many of them in office.
• Quintal is political editor.
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