Media dividing ANC, claims Cronin
2012-12-13 22:26
Johannesburg - There is a campaign in the media to divide the ANC ahead of its national elective conference in Mangaung, SA Communist Party deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin said on Thursday.
This campaign had been underway for several months and had been stepped up in the past few weeks to divide the ANC and its alliance partners by "dumbing down key policy documents and setting up false oppositions," Cronin wrote in the SACP's newsletter, Umsebenzi Online.
"With the ANC's Mangaung national conference just days away, the campaign has reached a crescendo."
Cronin accused the "neo-liberal media commissars" of perpetrating the alleged campaign.
He said the media were presenting false divides within alliance policy between the national development plan, new growth path and the industrial policy action plan.
"Just about every other mainstream commentator along with the [Democratic Alliance] are trying to bill the Mangaung policy debate as a simplistic punch-up," Cronin said.
He accused media commentators of not having read the economic policy plans and having selectively pulled quotes from them.
Cronin argued that each plan spoke to different, though not necessarily conflicting, goals and were not "written in stone".
"They are setting out broad [and let me emphasise converging] guide-lines for action," he said.
Cronin called on the ANC delegates at Mangaung to reject media critiques of the plans.
- SAPA
