The Mac and Mo School for Deflecting Attention from One’s Alleged Misdemeanours has found an equally fly-by-night, but worthy, competitor. Dr Gomolemo Mokae, chairperson of the National Arts Council (NAC), is at the centre of allegations and counter-allegations of abuse of power, contravention of the Public Finance Management Act, poor corporate governance and financial irregularities at the country’s premier arts funding body.
In an outstanding performance on a recent radio programme (if he were auditioning for the lead role in Brett Bailey’s piece about Idi Amin, that is) Mokae thoroughly bullied the presenter, flatly refused to engage in debate with other participants and used the opportunity to sling mud at a range of named and unnamed parties.
”I know there’s a self-styled guru in this nation who is very bitter because he never got to be the director general of arts and culture,” ranted Mokae. ”I know he feels very bitter because he never got to be the adviser to the minister. And I know that they’ve inherited the fight of Doreen [Nteta — the suspended CEO of the NAC] to be their own fight,” he conspired, reducing the call by the Network for Arts and Culture South Africa to an independent inquiry into the serious allegations against him and the NAC’s vice-chairperson as merely the work of an embittered individual.
Is this what we have become? A nation that might have given up on sticks and stones in dealing with political foes, but which resorts to the lowest form of democratic discourse — name-calling — as a way of deflecting attention from one’s debatable activities?
Question the abuse of power, and be labelled a racist. Decry the excesses of an elite, and be dismissed as a sell-out. Expose the corrupt, and risk reclassification as a pawn of the white minority. Break ranks with the conspiracy of self-enrichment, and be ostracised as a traitor. Critique some aspect of government policy publicly, and be marginalised as unpatriotic.
If you’re not a multimillionaire former trade unionist or a happy-clappy praise singer of the further economic empowerment of the already-economically empowered, you’re an ultra-leftist.
Beg for people who are appointed to strategic management positions to be equipped with the necessary skills, and be dismissed as anti-transformationist. Investigate allegations of criminal activity against former comrades, and be labelled an apartheid spy. The Robert Mugabe Movement for the Promotion of Afro-Pessimism is alive and well south of the Limpopo, and is gaining momentum while rational debate is assassinated by smear tactics, intellectual rigour is massacred by emotional obfuscation, and genocide is committed against the values of decency and the principles of democracy.
Morality is turned on its head. What is right and wrong is for the powerful to decide. Who is good or bad is determined by political expedience. Judging guilt and innocence is the preserve of party political majorities on subcommittees.
The politically-connected shall govern. The independently-minded are marginalised. The basically decent are accused. The corrupt are protected. The motives of the principled are questioned. The ambitions of the self-serving are promoted. The democrats are silenced. Those who subvert the Constitution and the law are provided with ample platforms. The belligerent and loud hold sway. Those who speak quiet sense are ignored.
I can already hear the accusers. I can see them lining up, frothing at the mouth.
So let me save the taxpayers a commission and confess. I’m a racist. I’m a traitor. I’m a spy. I’m an ultra-leftist. I’m bitter. I’m not a patriot, I’m anti-transformation. And I’m a sell-out.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, can we address the real issues of governance, leadership, policy, management and strategy within the sector so that we have something to celebrate next year?