WHO ARE . . . JOEL NETSHITENZHE AND YACOOB ABBA OMAR?
Ferial Haffajee
It’s appropriate that the modest Joel Netshitenzhe is reading Primary Colours. The novel about an obscure southern governor and his election trail to the White House is a testament to spin doctors – the powerful back-room advisers whose job it is to put their party or candidate’s “spin” on things.
Their mission: to get good “bites”(soundbites on television) and positive coverage from reluctant “scorps” (short for scorpions – the political industry’s term for journalists). Part of the problem between South African scorps and the government is a dearth of professional spin doctors.
Instead, ours range from the disingenuous (Jessie Duarte’s spins, for example, tried to arm-wrestle a “confession” from a reluctant civil servant and then didn’t stop Duarte from handing forged documents to the media) to demagogues whose idea of good coverage is articles they pen themselves.
The unassuming Netshitenzhe started work this month as the country’s Spin Doctor Number 1. He heads the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS), which is to replace the atrophied South African Communications Services (Sacs).
It is testimony to the importance the government places on overhauling its communications system that it has released its favoured son to take up this task. And in line with the recommendations of the presidential review commission, he is likely to work out of the office of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, a move which will give the new information agency far greater political clout and a more substantial budget than before.
Netshitenzhe is a policy meister and key African National Congress brain (he has written speeches for Oliver Tambo and still writes for President Nelson Mandela and Mbeki) who has committed himself to the GCIS for three years, after which, insiders say, a deputy presidency will only be a step away.
Last year, the communications task group which helped craft a new-look plan for government communication noted “…the poverty of [the government’s] communication system”.
They found that the South African Communications Services’ stigma as an apartheid propaganda machine had stuck beyond 1994. New ministers and their director generals didn’t trust it and morale at the communication service was low despite what Netshitenzhe calls “pockets of excellence”.
He is frank: there will be some retrenchments as he works to set up the new structure which must take government’s message to the masses and to potential investors overseas in a more co-ordinated fashion.
Netshitenzhe’s history is the stuff Steven Spielberg should get his hands on. His office in the Union Buildings is luxurious and airy with views down to the landscaped gardens and up to the koppies of Muckleneuk.
It’s been a long road from the dirt-poor village of Sibasa in the then far Northern Transvaal where he was born. The bright young scholar made it to Natal University’s medical school in 1976 where he scored brilliant results before going into exile.
His curriculum vitae is brimful with academic achievement from a master’s degree in philosophy he completed in Moscow to the MSc he is currently enrolled for with the University of London. While exiled, he served in the ANC’s highest military and political structures: he ran Radio Freedom and edited its journal Mayibuye as Peter Mayibuye.
His best qualification for his new job is a post he held between 1984 and 1990 when the ANC was unbanned. As head of Internal Information and Propaganda, he was its ultimate spin doctor who played a key role in the change of power which came four years later. He also served on the ANC’s highest strategic body, the political military council, as did his deputy at the GCIS, Yacoob Abba Omar.
During his first days in exile, Abba Omar found a book in a Lusaka safe house which would stir a passion and many years later make him an ace manager at apartheid’s arms procurement agency, Armscor.
In among Vladimir Lenin’s collected works was the management tome, In Search of Excellence, by Tom Peters. “I looked at how management could be applied to ANC campaigns and structures,” says Abba Omar.
He and Netshitenzhe go a long way back and were key players in keeping the ANC’s propaganda machine well-oiled. “I use the word [propaganda] more in the sense of propagational,” says Abba Omar. “I’ve been warned not to use it too often.”
Abba Omar left Armscor this month after five years. It was a sad goodbye and one that did not come without a lot of arm-twisting. “I’ve picked up a helluva lot of management experience at Armscor.”
As general manager for corporate communications, he almost single-handedly engineered the arms agency away from its image of apartheid kragdadigheid [forcefulness] and unapproachability to an acceptable part of the South African business landscape.
Even peaceniks in the Ceasefire Campaign speak well of Abba Omar, who always kept an open-door policy and offered them space to print their views in Armscor’s journal, Salvo.
He would like to start a similar forum for government issues. “There should be some connection where people can pick up the issue of the day. Crime, safety, corruption and the issues of delivery are very important.”
Multi-media telecentres currently being planned could be that connection. Abba Omar will play Ch, Guevara to Netshitenzhe’s Fidel Castro, implementing the strategy they must quickly hone.
Yacoob Abba Omar
Born: 1961 in Durban
Favourite media: Martin Creamer’s Engineering News, which he calls “my weekly dose of optimism”; The New Yorker and his wife’s Femina
Likely to say: “No phone must ring more than three times; no query must take more than two hours to be answered”
Spends his free time: Eating chocolate croissants with his daughter, Rabia, and watching Seinfeld