The African National Congress and the ANC Youth League have taken it upon themselves to attack the Mail & Guardian over its coverage of the recent cabinet re-shuffle, in particular the apparent differences between President Nelson Mandela and Pallo Jordan which led to the dismissal of the former minister of posts, telecommunications and broadcasting.
To be charitable to the Youth League, its contribution to public debate on the issue is of the puerile standard we have come to expect from this collection of superannuated schoolboys. Its statement is reproduced elsewhere in this edition and is not worthy of further comment.
The statement from the ANC is more alarming. Not so much for its denial of the accuracy of our report — we stand by it and have been gratified by congratulations we have received from a number of ANC politicians — but by virtue of its charge that our reporting was “a shocking insult to the president”. The phrase is intimidatory, suggesting we have committed a heinous act of lese-majeste.
It should be said — even though we have said it before — that we are passionate admirers of the president. His has been the most significant individual contribution to the liberation of South Africa and its present stability. We are grateful to him, above all, for his part in the creation of a state based on the rule of law, the division of powers and respect for fundamental rights including that of freedom of speech. It is out of respect for that heritage that we, as members of what can rightly be described as the Fourth Estate in our country, are concerned to subject the three other Estates — the executive, the legislature and the judiciary — to close and critical examination.
Our respect for Mandela is such that, at times, we find it difficult to discharge that duty; to avoid being swept away by the tide of national and international adulation. It takes an act of will to remind ourselves of the dangers of personality cults and of the tendency of political parties which enjoy the certainty of power — even if it derives from the ballot box — to silence criticism.
To accuse us of “insulting the president” smacks of the days when John Vorster attempted to silence a Rand Daily Mail political correspondent by accusing him of asking “unpatriotic questions”. The ANC has every right to challenge the accuracy of our reporting, to question our judgement and to ridicule our conclusions. There will always be a place for it to express such views in the columns of this newspaper. But any attempt to intimidate us will be met with a contempt born of a confidence that ours is the defence of Mandela’s bequest to the nation and theirs is the betrayal of it.