I have been amused by recent efforts by the right or centre of our political spectrum to portray their publications or institutions as part of a great effort to ensure proper and fair debate in SA on what we are doing wrong and how we fix it. It’s a battle between liberals of the right and left.
In March, it was the Institute of Race Relations inviting David Bullard to a seminar at the University of Stellenbosch to prove it was a champion of free speech, even though the keynote address ended up calling the people it disagreed with (me, basically) "utterly mad".
And a moment ago I got an e-mail from James Myburgh, the publisher of Politicsweb, telling me that while he was committed to telling the truth, he was nevertheless keen to hear all sides of a story.
"We are and have always been committed to giving all sides a fair hearing even, and indeed especially, to those with whom we may most seriously disagree," he intones.
Well, ever since I said here two weeks ago that I was going to vote to support President Cyril Ramaphosa on May 8 (which obviously means I have to vote ANC, even though I would rather not), Politicsweb has published a string of articles attacking me.
We all have the same facts, but not once have they asked me to explain why I did what I did. Don’t bother, James. Too late now. Hope the fundraising goes well though. I like Politicsweb and I’ll sign up and become a (paying) supporter.
The reaction to my position in this election has been savage. Whether they are DA MPs, other journalists jockeying to be "right" or just Twitter idlers retweeting the aforesaid, I am a naïve, ANC-supporting, woolly minded pseudo-journalist. A vote for Ramaphosa is a vote for Ace Magashule, who will without question defenestrate Ramaphosa the moment the election is done.
The commentariat, from right to left, from Julius Malema to Michael Cardo, has been cruel about Ramaphosa. And me. But the only reasonable, actually really very good piece I have read was in this space on Tuesday by Tom Eaton, who made two important points.
First, expecting Ramaphosa to effect the arrests of thieves in his party is absurd. He would endanger his own position. And second, that is not what we want our political leaders to be doing. We are not a banana republic. "Ramaphosa," said Eaton, "can’t wield power if he no longer has it."
Obvious, you would have thought, but my Twitter feed is littered with sentiments like "CR has been in office a year and NOT ONE looter has been arrested."
Yet all he can do is empower the prosecuting authorities to do their jobs. And he has. And he will, today, face the easiest of tests when he has to decide whether to fire Nomgcobo Jiba and Lawrence Mrwebi from the NPA after the inquiry into their fitness to hold office went against them.
He is slow, I’ll concede, but he hasn’t really erred yet in commission. Omission maybe. He has grotesque people in his cabinet. But he is also stronger than most people give him credit for. Which brings me to Eaton’s second big point. He will not, he wrote, "pooh-pooh anyone who, despite reading the facts, continues to fear a recall" of Ramaphosa by the ANC after election.
That’s reasonable too. And let’s assume, as the suburbs and many of my media colleagues firmly insist, it is going to happen. All I want is for someone to describe, in some detail please, how the recall, the coup, would be made. Would it depend on the size of the ANC vote? Cyril gets 55% and the party formally recalls him? Who is the replacement? Magashule? Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma? Would it happen in 2020 at the ANC’s national general council? According to ANC rules, a national general council can’t appoint people.
So it would be in parliament? The EFF puts a motion of no-confidence in Ramaphosa after the election and half the ANC caucus rebels and backs it? What would the DA do? Helen Zille says the best way to encourage Ramaphosa’s reforms is to vote DA. Would they, in this case, come to his aid and vote against the
motion?
The fact is that given time and political space, Ramaphosa is uniquely placed to do SA some real good. It is why I am going to vote for him. His powers over appointments and institutions as president are immense. I’d rather have just a year of him appointing constitutional court judges, directors at the NPA and leaders in our intelligence services than the chaos and uncertainty that would follow a really poor result for him next month.
Someone wrote a column this week taking me to task for writing in 2018 that by now (April) people would have begun to be arrested for looting the state. The month is not yet over and I’m guilty of missing a highly speculative deadline. A thousand apologies. I might be a few weeks out. Calm down.
• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.
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