In the good old days, when the tripartite alliance was a united, well-oiled and hegemonic machine, it deployed a brutally effective strategy against its enemies.
It worked like this: a threat was identified and the ANC would respond in a statement. The language would be reasonable enough but it would determine the line — inevitably evoking its greatest weapons in doing so, race being a perennial favourite.
Soon this would be followed by its partners, the SACP and union federation Cosatu, who would release a similar sentiment. Then the leagues, the ANC Youth League, the ANC Women’s League, the Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA), the Young Communist League (YCL), and so forth. And finally, the smaller component parts of the alliance, individual unions, for example.
Systematically, over the course of week or fortnight, the media would be bombarded by a range of opinions — yet simultaneously the same one. It was a brilliant tactic. The press would report each one as if it were an independent position arrived at by each role-player of their own volition, but together they would create the impression of some huge, up-swelling of anger and outrage.
And as you moved away from the ANC’s defining narrative, and out towards the smaller component parts of the alliance, so the language would be become more radical and extreme. In this way, the ANC could always position itself as reasonable, but simultaneously dine out on the extremist attitudes of the fringe.
It was incredibly effective. And many moral panics were manufactured in this way. The media happily played its part. But the age of Jacob Zuma destroyed the alliance’s ability to behave in this way. Not only did it split the ANC itself, but its alliance partners too. There was no shared objective. Every issue would inevitably split two ways. And the media was less prone to facilitating its media agenda.
Broken alliance
So, faced with an enemy between 2009 and 2017, the alliance’s response machine was steadily broken, until, by the end, complete randomness defined its communication. There was still some semblance of a grand position, of course, but it was driven more by individuals than by organisations or leagues.
[They] are all still there, waiting for the next enemy to defame, insult, and undermine, in the name of blind loyalty and an amoral attitude to truth and justice
The ultimate enemy during this period was public protector Thuli Madonsela and the ultimate threat, her report on Nkandla. It hung like the Sword of Damocles over the ANC, for much of the period.
The alliance tried its best to roll out the machine, but division was so rife and the president so morally compromised, it was nothing like the days of old. Nevertheless, look at who said what during that period and none of those people who stuck their neck out to defend Zuma and denigrate the public protector ever faced any consequences.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Once in power, President Cyril Ramaphosa rewarded the vast majority of them, welcoming them back into the fold, with new positions and powers. Today, that disparate collection of individuals, who would die in the pitch to destroy the integrity of the office of the public protector and its incumbent at the time, are all still there, waiting for the next enemy to defame, insult, and undermine, in the name of blind loyalty and an amoral attitude to truth and justice.
What follows is a look at who said what at the time; their position at the time; and the station they occupy today. Together, this would seem an important moral litmus test for Ramaphosa (himself fundamentally compromised on the subject), one he has failed. The alliance’s attitude to Madonsela constitutes a collective ethical crime — one which was ultimately rewarded, not punished.
The attacks on Madonsela took four distinct forms. First, there were ad hominem and personal insults, directed at her and her character. Second, conspiratorial myth-making, designed to suggest she was serving a treasonous or partisan political agenda. Third, misdirection and misrepresentation, intended to confuse the public and detract from evidence and reason. Fourth, and finally, there were lies, blatant and crude, which served simply to achieve any one of the above.
These were some of the main, high-profile culprits:
Gwede Mantashe
Position at time: ANC secretary-general
Attacks: Few people did more to insult, undermine or malign Madonsela and her report than Mantashe. As early as October 2013, he would suggest she was “protecting interests of a particular section of society”. In November, he would say she had handled the report, “in a manner that suggests she is an interested party”. In December, he said she was “playing a political game”.
In March 2014, he declared, “it has now become a political report, and we will handle it as such”. Also in March, he suggested she had leaked information in aid of the opposition, an accusation he would repeat in August: “The office of the public protector leaks every report she writes.” He suggested that “her intention to discredit the ANC and its leadership in government had been consistent.”
Position now: ANC chairperson and mineral resources minister
Blade Nzimande
Position at time: SACP secretary-general and minister of higher education (later fired)
Attacks: Before Nzimande underwent his Damascus experience — to come to the conclusion that Zuma was not the demi-god he had helped elect — Nzimande was one of the first to try to undermine the public protector. In April 2012, he complained about a “glaring selectivity” on her part and suggested that a “liberal offensive is trying to rule from the grave, and smartly using systems supporting democracy”.
In March 2014, the SACP issued a statement that accused the public protector of leaking and of “casting aspersions” on the president. It accused her of abusing her powers and her comments of becoming “increasingly laced with those of one opposition party”.
But he would reserve his most vicious attack for April 2014, when he would describe media reports on Nkandla as “white people’s lies”. He said, “Papers are the lies of a white man. We are not told the truth about Nkandla. It is being used as a political tool.”
Position today: SACP secretary-general and transport minister
Bheki Cele
Position at time: ANC national executive committee (NEC) member
Attacks: In February 2014, Cele suggested the office of the public protector was behaving like a street committee, and he was found guilty without evidence or a defence: “Anywhere else, you are innocent until proven guilty. With the public protector, you are guilty until you can prove your innocence.”
Also in February, he said the public protector’s Nkandla investigation “leaves me with the distinct impression your office set out to target me as a scapegoat for the Nkandla project”.
Position today: Police minister
Kebby Maphatsoe
Position at time: Chair of the MKMVA and deputy defence minister
Attacks: Maphatose was one of the most poisonous peddlers of disinformation and conspiracy. Notoriously, in September 2014, he suggested Madonsela was a CIA spy: “We can’t allow people to hijack the ANC. We’ll fight and defend the ANC. uThuliumele asitshele ukuthi ubani ihandler yakhe [Thuli must tell us who her handler is].”
“They are even using our institution now,” he said, “These Chapter 9 institutions were created by the ANC but are now being used against us, and if you ask why, it is the CIA. Ama [The] Americans want their own CEO in SA and we must not allow that.”
Position today: deputy defence minister
Jessie Duarte
Position at time: Deputy ANC secretary-general
Attacks: Another poisonous, malicious peddler of disinformation, Duarte would lead the charge against Madonsela on the ANC’s narrative of leaking. In December 2013, she would say as much: “When a provisional report is published, you go ballistic. The public protector simply issued a statement and we have to say she seemed comfortable that the report was leaked.”
“We have noticed,” she said, “the same pattern of leaks coming from her office and the same pattern of the public protector making comments about an investigation and the report then being leaked.”
In August 2014, she would say the ANC was concerned by “a public protector who is very populist in her orientation and sometimes does not present the full picture to the public”. And again, on the ostensible leaking: “There is nothing unfortunate about the leaks: they are timed and deliberate.”
Position today: Deputy ANC secretary-general
Cyril Ramaphosa
Position at time: ANC and South African deputy president
Attacks: Ramaphosa would announce, while campaigning for the ANC, that everything to do with Nkandla was above aboard, even in the face of the public protector’s final report: “There was no corruption, nothing to do with Nkandla was unlawful,” he said in March 2014, before adding the bizarre observation that, “The ‘fire pool’ is not even as big as an Olympic swimming pool.”
And he would defend Zuma too: “We are saying that the integrity of the president remains intact and that this president has the ability and know-how to lead our government and SA going forward.”
Position today: ANC and South African president
Naledi Pandor
Position at time: Home affairs minister of home affairs and, later, minister of science and technology
Attacks: Generally wise enough to stay clear of the mud-slinging game, when push came to shove, Pandor was perfectly willing to lend her credibility to the ANC line that the public protector was driving a political agenda. She would tell parliament in August 2014: “I will say, that if an institution of any of the aspects of the constitution, begins to be utilised, primarily as a political witch hunt, then, certainly, in the public domain, where these matters are being raised, we have a right to reply, ridiculous or not.”
Pandor was responding to questions in the National Assembly, in which DA chief whip John Steenhuisen referred to “a worrying trend to hold the public protector in contempt”.
Position today: Minister of higher education
Baleka Mbete
Position at time: Speaker in the National Assembly and ANC chair
Attacks: In a moment of profound anti-constitutionalism (and with scant regard for her admittedly farcical role as neutral arbiter of oversight) Mbete would suggest cultural norms and standards negated any investigation into a man’s private home. In April 2014, she would say of Madonsela’s final report: “[Thuli Madonsela’s Nkandla report] then goes on to say a few things which, in our view, are actually debatable because in the African tradition you don’t interfere with a man’s kraal. The issue of a man’s kraal or a kraal of a family is a holy space.”
Position today: Speaker in the National Assembly
The people cited above represent the tip of iceberg. A great many people defended the president, Nkandla and attacked the public protector. Zweli Mkhize, Colin Maine, Zizi Kodwa, Buti Manamela, Stone Sizani, Jeremy Cronin, and a great number in the ANC national caucus. Each one, on their own, is hard to condemn as responsible for introducing a fundamental lie or attack that profoundly changed the grand narrative at play, but together, together they constituted the alliance’s propaganda machine. And they would churn the lies and misdirection above, on a mass scale.
Today, in the age of false hope and blind belief in the Ramaphosa presidency, all this is worth bearing in mind: there is no new ANC. All it has is a different coat of paint
Together the collective fantasy they produced reads as follows: Madonsela served at the behest of the opposition, if not the CIA. She was a populist and glaringly selective, who ran her office like it was a street committee, pronouncing people guilty without offering them a chance to defend themselves.
She leaked her reports to discredit the government and its leaders in service of a personal political agenda. And of those leaders, the president had the integrity and know-how to lead, immune to her criticisms. Her findings where no more than white people’s lies and media deliberately hid the truth about Nkandla. The truth being there was no corruption and nothing unlawful happened at Nkandla. Her report was the product of a political witch hunt and besides, a man’s home is a holy space, beyond the constitutional interrogation.
That story, that grand falsehood, was willingly spread by the ANC on a monumental scale, and by what remained of the organisation’s ramshackle intelligentsia. Today, Ramaphopsa has offered no apology for the way he or the ANC behaved at the time and none of the lies told so blatantly and loudly by members of the alliance have been met with any sanction or caution. Not an ounce of contrition or remorse has been demonstrated by Ramaphosa for the way the ANC misled the public and abused the public protector. Instead, the machine was disassembled and re-assembled in another order, ready to be set into action again, when the next ostensible threat manifests.
He offered no apology because that kind of behaviour is hardwired into the ANC’s DNA.
Today, in the age of false hope and blind belief in the Ramaphosa presidency, all this is worth bearing in mind: there is no new ANC. All it has is a different coat of paint.
And how does the ANC keep convincing the masses the Emperor wears the finest clothes? It simply acts accordingly. When Madonsela left office in 2016, Mantashe, for so long the face of the ANC’s contempt and intolerance for the public protector, would have the gall to say the following: “You saved us from ourselves from time to time, that is something we have not acknowledged publicly, but do so quietly. Every report made us think — it became a point of learning. I assure you that you leave the ANC a wiser party, as you go.”
Because if you are going to lie and deceive on the level the ANC does, it can all only ever be held together by the ultimate lie: that the whole experience has made the ANC wiser. But then, what does Mantashe have to worry about — he is now the mineral resources minister. Job well done. Reward received. The lesson learnt was always the most simple one, it always is with the ANC: deceit is a profitable business.
• Van Onselen is the head of politics and government at the South African Institute of Race Relations.
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