Howard Barrell
The African National Congress is showing its first public signs of embarrassment over its submission to the Human Rights Commission’s (HRC) panel on the media which has drawn a mixture of sharp criticism, threats of legal action and ridicule from a variety of newspapers.
In a curious statement on Wed-nesday, the ANC reiterated its commitment to its submission but distanced Jeff Radebe, its head of policy who presented the ANC position to the HRC, from responsibility for it.
In a careful choice of words, the ANC also reiterated its support for the “spirit and intent” of its submission to the HRC, but held back from any endorsement of its detail.
However, the ANC said it would make “no retraction on any part of our statement” – a reference to demands for a retraction and apology by the Mail & Guardian, whose editor, Phillip van Niekerk, is considering a civil action for defamation against the ANC and Radebe, arising out of the submission.
Radebe presented the document to the HRC panel on April 5.
In its submission to the HRC, the ANC said Van Niekerk had written an opinion piece in 1998 critical of then-deputy president Thabo Mbeki, but caused it to appear under the byline of Lizeka Mda, then an M&G journalist, in order to disguise his racist intent to belittle Mbeki and blacks.
Van Niekerk, Mda and M&G journalists present at meetings at which the piece was discussed have all said the article was conceived and written by Mda. The M&G accused Radebe and the ANC of lying with defamatory intent and result.
The ANC said in Wednesday’s statement that the submission to the HRC was a document that had been put out by the organisation itself and could not be attributed to Radebe or “any individual”. This appears to be a manoeuvre by which the ANC hopes to get Radebe off the hook legally. Radebe delivered the ANC submission to the HRC panel under oath.
Various aspects of the ANC submission, particularly the allegations against Van Niekerk and Mda, have been criticised or ridiculed in, among others, the Cape Argus, Business Day, City Press, the M&G, The Star and the Sunday Times.
Wednesday’s ANC statement accused the media of “a glaring failure” to address “the substance of our submission, which was about the ideology of racism and its manifestations in the media both subjectively and objectively”.