Ordinarily, I’d be celebrating the news that Fikile Mbalula has been gagged by the ANC. When he stops talking, South Africa’s national IQ rises by 30 points. But this week I find myself in the genuinely bizarre position of wanting to defend him against a ruling that is as hypocritical as it is revealing.
To be clear, this week’s peculiar twist doesn’t absolve Mbalula of being a cartoonishly silly politician. If you wanted to represent the collapse of the ANC in a single graph, all you’d have to do is draw a line with Sol Plaatje at one end — an intellectual and mensch who was the party’s first secretary-general — and Mbalula at the other, and most people would immediately nod and say “Oh, right, yes, I see now”.
At the beginning of last week, Mbalula was once again being laughed at, this time for publicly admitting that the ANC had lied about Jacob Zuma’s swimming pool being a “fire pool”.
For the ANC, however, this was clearly no laughing matter, and this week we heard that the national executive committee of the party had gagged Mbalula, with News24 reporting that the NEC wanted Mbalula to be “given guidelines before he was allowed to talk to the press”.
It (ANC) has publicly confirmed that, even now, despite everything, its first instinct is to close ranks around Zuma-era sleaze, and that voters are fools to trust it.
I assume that by “guidelines” they mean “electrodes attached to his nipples, connected to a button held by his handlers”, but I digress.
To the NEC, Mbalula’s transgression was clear: by admitting that the party lies to cover up corruption, it explained, he was making himself guilty of the sin of “decampaigning” the ANC.
I understand the logic. If someone speaks or acts in public in a way that causes voters to believe that a political party is lying to cover up corruption, then it is reasonable to suggest that that person is campaigning against the party.
But where I lose the thread of the ANC’s logic is when it says that Mbalula should be gagged, but doesn’t mention anyone else.
After all, every single day most of the ANC’s top leadership publicly speaks or acts in a way that causes me — and I’m sure many others — to believe that the party is lying to cover up corruption. Surely, if Mbalula is to be gagged for decampaigning the ANC, the same should apply to the entire top echelon of the party?
At this point, defenders of the ANC will no doubt ask me: what specific thing have they said or done lately to make me believe such a thing?
To which I would reply: read the last few paragraphs again.
This week, the ANC’s highest body has told the press that if someone admits that the party lied to cover up corruption, then that person is campaigning against the ANC.
In other words, it has publicly announced that being honest with voters, and exposing corruption, violates the principles of the ANC.
It has publicly confirmed that, even now, despite everything, its first instinct is to close ranks around Zuma-era sleaze, and that voters are fools to trust it.
And, since it has also confirmed that the punishment for saying such things is gagging, my only question is: when does the blessed silence begin, Mr President?
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