OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday
THE ruling African National Congress has launched a bitter attack on the press for reporting that President Thabo Mbeki’s late spokesman had died of Aids, with ANC Youth League president Malusi Gigaba telling the media “you must at least mimic humans.”
At a memorial service in Johannesburg for Parks Mankahlana, who died last week aged 36, ANC MP Peter Mokaba told mourners: “The media has disappointed us and I do not know how they are going to repair the damage.
“A comrade passes away … a comrade who served them [media] well … and they want us to bury him with a diminished status.”
He said the media should show respect for family and friends of Mankahlana, who served as spokesman for both former President Nelson Mandela and Mbeki.
“Stop hurting them and allow Parks to rest in peace,” he said.
This follows an appeal by Mbeki himself for the media to accept Nthabiseng Mankahlana’s word that her husband had died of chronic anaemia.
“When Nthabiseng says ‘this is what my husband suffered from and this is what killed my husband’ I would hope, truly hope, that none of us will take it upon ourselves to come to a conclusion that we know better than she,” he said at a memorial service in Mankahlana’s home town of Mdantsane in eastern South Africa.
The ANC has not disclosed Mankahlana’s cause of death, but merely said he had died after “a long illness.”
Several newspapers have however claimed he died of an Aids-related illness, citing unnamed ANC sources.
But the Johannesburg-based The Star, which is seen as sycophantic to the government, this week broke ranks, saying speculation on an Aids death was dangerous in South Africa where victims of the disease and their families were discriminated against.
The Star’s deputy editor, Mathatha Tsedu, told fellow journalists at the memorial service: “I feel perturbed at being part of an institution that shows a vulture-like tendency of disrespect for life and death.”
The controversy over Mankahlana’s illness is ironic as he had for months been Mbeki’s first line of defence when the president landed himself in trouble for questioning whether HIV causes Aids. – AFP