There is something unsettling about political communication that sometimes sends my mind into a tailspin. I often wonder if the dubious messages from politicians are gaffes or simply the result of failure to understand the language.
Take President Cyril Ramaphosa’s address to the ANC lekgotla yesterday. “And if we really want to shore up the fortunes of the ANC in the local government elections, we must not cut corners and we must not take chances, and the usual tendencies that we’ve had of deploying people on a factional basis must be foregone,” he said. “This election is going to be important.”
Starting from the back, what does it mean that this election, the local government polls due later this year or early next year, is going to be important? Does that mean the previous election in 2024, in which the ANC’s support plummeted to just under 40%, was not important? Is that why the party was given a bloody nose — because it did not think it could lose as badly as it did?
In truth, the 2024 elections were even more important. Ramaphosa risked being the first ANC president since 1994 to become leader of the official opposition. He couldn’t have gone about campaigning for that election nonchalantly. And he did not. So the words, “this election is going to be important”, are superfluous. The phrase might seem to be communicating a deep mystery about this election, but in fact it’s just a linguistic error.
It’s the kind of thing politicians say without thinking about what the words mean. It’s like saying “we will no longer tolerate corruption”, as if there was a time when corruption was regarded as OK. Even at the height of looting, leaders tell us they’re busy fighting corruption.
When Ramaphosa says, “and if we really want to shore up fortunes of the ANC in the local government elections”, his use of “if” and “really” imputes doubt. It suggests there might not be a genuine desire to shore up ANC fortunes, which is possible but certainly not what he means.
The problem with an appeal to the conscience of scoundrels is that it could easily be ignored. But a threat is a promise from a concerned leader, sending a message that there will be no room for malfeasance
But his message is that in the event that ANC leaders are genuine about saving the party from its decline, then “we must not cut corners”. And there’s another startling admission in an election year. The leader of the biggest party in the country is making a heedless, unmindful appeal to members not to cut corners.
Shouldn’t the message be that those bent on cutting corners, in spite of the leadership’s efforts to eliminate such behaviour, will be harshly dealt with? In other words, it should be couched as a threat, not an appeal to the scoundrels to reconsider their undesirable ways.
The problem with an appeal to the conscience of scoundrels is that it could easily be ignored. But a threat is a promise from a concerned leader, sending a message that there will be no room for malfeasance.
Ramaphosa goes on to say: “We must not take chances and the usual tendencies that we’ve had of deploying people on a factional basis must be foregone.” When the party leader uses “we” to include himself in those taking chances, I wonder if he’s aware that he is sending the message that he, too, owns the wrongs he’s highlighting.
It is one thing as a leader to make yourself out to be part of the team battling challenges, but quite another to self-associate with wrongdoing. If he says, “Our battle against crime and our effort against unemployment have not yielded positive results,” we know he’s not only explaining a self-evident truth, but he’s intentionally locating himself as part of a collective in pursuit of something noble but elusive.
But Ramaphosa inserts himself in the ANC’s factionalist tendencies, which have robbed the party of its own talent and brought it to its knees. The fights for leadership, which on occasion have become violent, are about who is in whose corner and, once victory is attained, who is entitled to the spoils.
The question is never about who in the party is the best placed to excel in a given post; it’s about whether they back the right faction. The result has been calamitous.
But the same spectre of factionalism is about to hit the DA hard. The closer it gets to the levers of power and patronage, the more intense the internal contestation becomes. The DA’s poor handling of the Dion George vs John Steenhuisen saga serves as a window into the dawning of that party’s internecine battles.
When talking about a topic as central as factionalism, would the correct message for a party leader not be to show what efforts have been made to nip this menacing tendency in the bud? Wouldn’t that send a message that Ramaphosa is not merely complaining or stating the obvious but actively pursuing solutions?
The last bit of this extract reads: “The interests of the people, comrades, must be primary in everything that we do in the forthcoming local government elections.” At first glance, the statement seems innocuous.
Looked at more deeply, however, we must say to him that the interests of the people must be primary, not just because of the elections but in everything these comrades do — and always. If this were the case, people would not scoff at improvements in service delivery in the weeks or months before elections. They would know services improve regardless of whether there is an election around the corner. Yet we all know how far from the truth this is.
What is shared here is just a small part of a long speech that included phrases such as “local government is now prioritised this year”, as if it never was before.
With events such as the cabinet lekgotla, the state of the nation address, the national budget and the Mining Indaba all around the corner, the perils of political communication will dog us all for much of this year.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.