SLR Diary: Cyril, please move Baleka Mbete, other ANC clowns off-stage!
We think it. Simon says it. This week, Simon says that Baleka Mbete and a range of other ANC leaders should be moved out of sight because they are embarrassing the party and the country. Speaking on Al Jazeera, Mbete wagged her finger at the host in a UK studio as she put the blame for crime on 300 years of colonialism. Mbete sparked laughter in the audience when she put forward a pro-Zuma view that it was not a large swimming pool at Nkandla – Zuma's controversial homestead that sucked up taxpayers' funds. When asked why South Africa has the highest murder rate in the world, according to the United Nations, Mbete retorted: "So what?" Simon says Mbete's performance on TV is a reminder that the SABC hasn't done the ANC any favours as President Cyril Ramaphosa tries to encourage the international investment community to look favourably on South Africa. – Jackie Cameron
By Simon Lincoln Reader*
If strangers to South Africa's fortunes wanted to know what Cyril Ramaphosa was up against as he spoke in London last week about renewal and cleansing in the face of a Moody's rating announcement, a good place to start would have been on the 2nd of October, at the Oxford Union, roughly 100 miles west of Claridges. It was here that Al Jazeera humiliated a second ANC female leader in three years. This time it was the turn of the unlikeable, intransigent, disingenuous but perpetually smug Baleka Mbete to embarrass her country, which she did by claiming a gap in her memory with the same dismissive abandon her ANC colleague previously spoke of a hole of her head.
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The presenter of the program, Mehdi Hassan, is not particularly likeable himself, but he appeared to grasp the frustration central to the South African condition in recent years: how talentless, unaccountable and incompetent elites aligned to the ANC find themselves in roles they are completely unfit or unqualified to occupy, as leaders or as beneficiaries in empowerment schemes.
It did not take long for denials and excuses to surface. Early in the interview Mbete was supported by someone called Xolani Xala, ostensibly an ANC man in London. As she was being pounded by Hassan, Xolani offered up that fraying, embittered defence – and into the room the greying, incontinent black Labrador hours from death trundled, desperately scratching at the floor for balance and meaning: "in (South) Africa you call it corruption, but in Westminster, you call it expense scandal". Hassan, very much a proponent of contemporary social justice theory, nodded in agreement.Were this to be explored in greater detail – as it should have been – it would have emerged that few, if any, qualify what happened with MP expense accounts ten years ago as "not corruption". It was blatant corruption. But it was treated as such – this incident alone resulted in the prosecution and incarceration of more politicians than those involved in the scandals of The Arms Deal, Sarafina 2, Marikana, Life Esidimeni, Travelgate, and to date, State Capture – combined.
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The hostile approach is an extraordinary feature of ANC media appearances, dating back nearly two decades. In 2000, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang's performance on 702 attracted timeless ridicule and is still quoted today. In 2009, Jessie Duarte appeared on the BBC's Today show and shrieked at the presenter John Humphrys. Admittedly, it was not always easy to understand Bathabile Dlamini as she slurred her way through accusations, but no good ever came. Dudu Myeni's strategy of provoking contempt has always been wildly successful; Maite Nkoana-Mashabane set the standard in 2016 which Baleka effortlessly surpassed in the first 15 minutes of the interview.
Together these reveal an assumption of breathtaking arrogance: the party assumes that the environments into which they step will be overwhelming favourable, because they are entitled to favouritism, something their experiences of the SABC have taught them or if not the SABC, an enduring liberal submission (that was clearly present in the audience). But it doesn't go that way and they never learn. Reckless expectations are dashed and we are resigned to familiar atavism – to the return of a party's fantasies of being loathed on account of its complexion alone.
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There are many points during the interview where the ANC resembles more a chemical spill than a political party, but our strangers might be especially intrigued by a point raised by Makhosi Khoza, attending as a panel member. "As a feminist," Makhosi declared, "I was disappointed in her (Mbete's) behaviour".
Never before have we witnessed an emphasis upon women in public life. Its prominence is explicit in corporate extensions, in the media, in the arts and politics. With this in mind, it would be only be fair to tell our strangers that one of Jacob Zuma's strongest support features, during the nine wasted years, came from women – despite his acquittal from rape charges, despite frequent, incendiary sexist remarks and of course, despite the number of wives he has accumulated, the youngest being in her early twenties. If we couple the sentiments of Baleka to the conduct of the leadership of the women's league and to the statistics of gender violence, we could extrapolate a scenario at complete odds to the present order, where ANC women are not advocates of feminism or equality but enablers of toxic masculinity, in other words, surrendered activists tasked with defending the indefensible.
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The event ends. Because she is so chronically deluded, she would not have realised that she had managed to prompt scorn from a place where once almost limitless sympathy flowed. The world, if the audience is anything to go by, is losing its patience with the culture of believing victims, or those who claim to be, and this – coupled to the decline of trust in politicians – presents the ANC with a threat it probably has not considered.
But I imagine the most pressing piece of advise our strangers would offer the President would be along these lines: as if your life depended upon it, very carefully, thoughtfully – FFS – examine who speaks in the party's name.
- Simon Lincoln Reader works and lives in London.