If you knew what leaders of the different opposition parties tend to say about each other over, for example, lunch with a journalist, you too would have sat up and taken note of an event last Friday.
Leaders of the New National Party, Democratic Party, Pan Africanist Congress, African Christian Democratic Party and Freedom Front shared the same platform at the Gauteng legislature. What prompted them to put aside the pettiness to which they are prone was shared anger at the media campaign by the Government Communication and Information Service (GCIS)on the government’s achievements since 1994.
You will probably have encountered one of the GCIS’s offerings. They include newspaper inserts, 15-minute radio slots and leaflets. They contain what the GCIS and Deputy Minister in the Deputy President’s Office Essop Pahad assure us is factual information drawn from President Nelson Mandela’s speech at the opening of the current sitting of Parliament and the briefings given to journalists and diplomats by ministers at the time.
The opposition parties argue that the GCIS is using taxpayers’ money to run a propaganda campaign for the African National Congress. They say the information may indeed be drawn from that speech and set of briefings; much of it may also be factual. But, they argue, in almost all instances, the information selected for publication reflects well on the ruling party; it is presented to do precisely that; few, if any, of the government’s failures or unresolved difficulties are dealt with; the government is portrayed as marching into glowing sunlit uplands of achievement. Moreover, say the opposition parties, this is being done with millions of rands from state coffers just 12 weeks before a general election, the date of which has been announced even if the Constitution has so far prevented its formal promulgation.
Opposition parties are concerned. Aware of the ANC’s vastly superior strength, they fear a de facto one-party state developing in South Africa and a carelessness about minority political views which this may engender. Indeed, they fear the GCIS campaign shows such disregard already exists.
The government response, given by Pahad in Parliament on Monday March 8 , might have been designed to exacerbate their fears. Pahad, not disposed to soothe others if an opportunity for combat presents itself, accused some opposition parties of developing “a new hobby”. This was “to wage a campaign of utter vitriol against the GCIS”.
Opposition leaders, he said, were “making fools of themselves”. Their objections to the campaign, he intoned, “border on censorship: an attempt to dictate to the government what it can and cannot say to the public”.
He added: “The government has a responsibility to keep citizens informed about its activities, and no one is going to tell us how to do this.”
No one is going to tell the government how to do this. Or that? Or the next thing?
This was the deputy president’s gatekeeper speaking from a set of prepared notes handed out to journalists a while earlier. He was not speaking in the heat of the moment.
Evidently Pahad does not see it as Parliament’s role in a democracy to lay out in law and test in debate the parameters of what a government should do and how it should do it. Instead, the government will tell the rest of us the manner in which, and degree to which, we may criticise or oppose its decisions.
Pahad told us: “The government welcomes comments from the opposition, and indeed from citizens, about the contents of these publications and programmes. This is part of national discourse in a democracy.”
Warming to his democratic theme, he continued: “If the opposition feel that the GCIS is not reflecting the truth, let them try to convince the public of this, and let them raise the concrete instances with the government.” But, he added, the opposition parties should not expect the government to review its record from their perspective.
Had the deputy president’s office resisted its evidently habitual first resort to outrage and, instead, examined the opposition’s objections, it might have noticed that these parties are, indeed, taking issue with the contents of the GCIS campaign. They are concerned with what is included and left out, with the manner of its presentation, with the benefits for the ANC that must flow from it, and with the financing of a partisan campaign from state coffers. In short, the opposition parties’ objections lie entirely within what could be termed “the national discourse in a democracy”.
The determination of a section of the ANC leadership and its allies to define what is proper criticism or opposition is something we would do well to keep an eye on in future. We on this newspaper encounter it almost daily. We are, in fact, in the midst of fighting off a particularly shameful attempt from that quarter to silence our independent voice.
It is clear the government will not address opposition parties’ concerns about the GCIS campaign. It was similarly dismissive about their worries over the insistence on bar-coded identity documents for voter registration and the effect this might have on opposition supporters’ ability to cast their ballots. Moreover, the government and the statutory bodies overseeing the election seem little concerned, as Stephen Friedman pointed out in his column in Business Day this week, that opinion polls show that more people want to vote on June 2 than have been able to register as voters. And there is little sign that the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s rules on coverage of political parties over the election campaign will satisfy the modest demands of the smaller organisations.
It is easy to dismiss these opposition worries. Pahad has shown us just how easy. With a shortsightedness that seemingly only affects those in power, the absence of immediate costs is used to justify this disregard. “So what?” is the underlying refrain. “What can they do about it?”
That chorus, however, misses the point. The legitimacy of our young democracy’s political institutions can be eroded by this kind of behaviour. It breaches the spirit of our democracy – of the respect for each other and of the willingness to seek a reasoned, fair compromise on which we have based it.
I hear a new tone in some opposition voices and see a new look in their eyes. These reflect not merely the exclusion from power with which opposition must learn to live, but a feeling that the rules are being rewritten to deprive the opposition of any prospect of victory in the game. This can be dangerous – perhaps not now, perhaps not next year. It can give birth to a corrosive despair and cynicism, among rulers, opposition and the remainder of the ruled, that says there is nothing to be gained from playing by the rules.
I fear I may not be wrong.