Dear Dr Nzimande
I am writing you this letter in response to the article published in The Star newspaper on the 2nd of November 2012, titled “Blade rips media” and the fact that you have been hogging the media limelight lately for wrong reasons. You seem to have replaced Julius Malema.
On the 19th of October 2012, you were quoted in the Sowetan newspaper having said that “None of yesterday's AIDS denialists must come and lecture us today on leadership when they have not accounted for hundreds of thousands of deaths they left by refusing to acknowledge that HIV causes AIDS and denying our people ARVs” alluding to Thabo Mbeki’s statement that our country is deepening into “…a dangerous and unacceptable situation of directionless and unguided national drift.”
In response to your statement, the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League (ANCYL) issued a statement in which it said you have stooped to "...the lowest levels of intellectual engagement, demonstrating an inability to discuss the content and merit of the issues raised by President Mbeki resorting rather to name calling, a silly and immature reaction to any debate.”
I thought I was the only one with the view that your desperate attempt to defend President Jacob Zuma’s systematically flawed and erratic leadership, even where it is unnecessary, opportunistically to safeguard your position in his Cabinet in case he is re-elected to serve for the second term, does not only descend you below a layperson’s level of engagement on matters of national interest but, has also proven that you are a pseudointellectual and further intensifies the growing view that the South African Communist Party (SACP) is nothing but, a careerist and inter-factionalist party whose political existence depends on factionalism within the ANC.
The ANC has to realise that its obsession with presidency while it overlooks equally important positions such as the secretary general and head of policy, currently occupied by the communists, Gwede Mantashe and Jeff Radebe respectively, has shifted the centre of power to the ultra-leftists to dictate to it which policies to adopt, the programmes of action to implement and leaders to elect, the demands that Mbeki stood firmly opposed to. In this regard, the biggest challenge it faces is to reclaim the power from the wolf in sheep’s clothing communists.
As the secretary general, Mantashe has been serving the interests of Zuma-aligned group within the ANC, which has further deepened the party into an irreconcilable factionalism while under the incumbency of Radebe, the ANC’s policies have come under a microscopic public scrutiny and heavily criticism.
Your below par level of thinking, along with that of another pseudointellectual Dr Mathole Motshekga has given credence to a question that lingers in many people’s minds, “Where are the African intellectuals?” Among those who have dared to answer this question is Tarty Teh, in the, “Where are the African intellectuals?” article, published in The Perspective, 2001. Teh impugns “The thinking among [the so-called] educated Africans, thinking which ignores the effects predicated on the known forces of nature that were the subject of our basic, formal and elementary education.”
You were also quoted in the mass media ascribed the exponential rise of the Democratic Alliance (DA) at the polls to Mbeki’s failure to deal with corruption in his tenure.
Sometimes, taken aback by your misdiagnosis of South African contemporary challenges and pseudo-analysis thereof, chiefly characterised by an outright distortion of well-known facts, do not only leave much to be desired or impugn your level of thinking which does not resemble that of an intellectual with doctorate degree but, make me wonder whether you live in the same South Africa (SA) that I live in. I still recall when Mbeki accused you of an ‘extraordinary ignorance’.
Having clearly preluded on the basis upon which the contents of this letter are premised, I wish to address you on the following:
(i) The media
I must own up though that I am one of those who believe that the South African media need to be regulated to enhance responsible journalism. However, the entity cannot be regulated merely to appease you or glorify the systematic failures of the ANC and its incumbent leader.
Without necessarily condoning the President to be disrespected as such, either in his own capacity or as the President of the Republic of SA but, through his ignominious ill-deeds which have downgraded the office holds and the Parliament alike to the lowest moral ground, he has earned himself the status. Respect is a moral responsibility which cannot be enforced through legislative inculcations.
It is under his futile tenure we have heard a Member of Parliament (MP) rudely telling others to shut up while Parliament is in session. It is under his futile tenure we have seen the opposition parties staging walkouts in protestation against the ANC’s abuse of Parliament.
It is under his futile tenure we have seen the ANC stubbornly forging ahead with the controversial Secrecy Bill and the proposed e-tolling system, grossly disregarding the groundswell expressed against the Bill and the system alike.
It is under his systematically erratic and flawed leadership we have seen the government failed to deliver the textbooks in Limpopo until midyear, had it not been by the intervention of the Section 27, the textbooks would not have been delivered.
It is under his systematically erratic and flawed leadership we have seen militarisation of police force which has resulted into the brutal killing of unarmed protester Andries Tatane, in Ficksburg, Free State and the Mariakana massacre. It is for these reasons that the report released by the National Planning Commission (NPC) points out that the Parliament has failed to carry out its most basic role of overseeing the chain of responsibility.
(ii) AIDS-denialism
I wonder whether you have ever dared to read the letter Mbeki wrote to world leaders in 2000. Although he questioned whether HIV causes AIDS, he made clear that the South African government committed itself from 1998 to, inter alia:
· Set up a Ministerial Task Force against HIV-AIDS, which he chaired himself and later chaired by Zuma;
· Establish partnerships against AIDS with various sectors in our society such as youth, women, business, labour unions and religious communities;
· Establish a National AIDS Council;
· Encourage safe sex and the use of condoms;
· Provide the necessary medicaments and deal with the diseases acquirable through immune deficiency;
· Take care of the children affected and orphaned to AIDS;
· Finance the activities against HIV-AIDS;
· Provide anti-retroviral drugs for various indications including mother-to-child transmission.
It is not only lie-rich to claim that his government refused to provide the necessary medicaments but also ascribed the breakthrough solely to Zuma.
(iii) The rise of the DA at the polls
On your assertion that the exponential rise of the DA at the polls has to do with the failure of Mbeki to deal with corruption, it is also lie-rich statement. The DA has exponentially risen at the polls since 2009, owing to Zuma’s systematically erratic and flawed leadership without any vision envisaged except corruptly squandering taxpayers’ hard-earned money with impunity on his homestead Nkandla and infiltration of Zulus into his Cabinet.
The DA has won all the court cases it lodged against his faulty appointments and decisions, from the seemingly non-existent spy tapes, the extension of the former Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo’s term of office and the appointment of Menzi Simelane. These court victories gave the DA an edge over the ANC.
It is indeed surprising that having falsely transmogrified yourself as an anti-graft advocate, acerbically having a go at the Black Middle Class, instead of acknowledging that the use of taxpayers’ money to build Zumaville amounts to corruption, you and the SACP in Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN) want the law to protect Zuma. Even the Minister of Public Works Thulas Nxesi, who is the communist, is trying in vain to justify the splurge in Nkandla.
Your all of a sudden defence mechanism for Zuma has deeper meaning than it meets layperson’s eyes, with the ANC’s nomination process still underway, you are so desperate to be nominated for top position, so that you are now making mockery of yourself.
Moving forward, do not let the politics of stomach or lust for power to get the better of you.
By - Molifi Tshabalala
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