An article in Business Day on Monday conformed “to the time-honoured practice within the South African media, stretching back to the disinformation campaigns of the 1980s, of depicting an African National Congress consumed by factionalism and conflict”, says the ANC’s Smuts Ngonyama.
“This is not the first time that media reports have used anonymous sources to elevate conjecture, rumour and hearsay to the level of front-page news. Nor is it likely to be the last,” he said.
He was referring to the lead story entitled “Anti-Zuma ANC faction pins hope on Motlanthe”.
The story, written by political editor Jacob Dlamini, said senior ANC officials are proposing secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe as the party’s next president, as factions in the ANC brace themselves for the political fallout from the Schabir Shaik fraud and corruption trial.
It said sources in the party connected to the informal campaign said Motlanthe “is seen as the most suitable candidate to oppose Deputy President Jacob Zuma — also the ANC’s deputy president — for the party’s presidency should Zuma survive the Shaik trial and run for the party presidency at the ANC’s next national conference in 2007”.
Ngonyama, the national spokesperson, said in a statement on Monday that the party has noted the report, which “makes a number of speculative and unsubstantiated claims about factions in the ANC supposedly lobbying for various presidential candidates”.
He said “many an ambitious journalist” has dressed up the comments of a few unnamed individuals as the gospel truth, and many a newspaper — whether seeking sensation or pursuing a particular agenda — “has prominently promoted those comments in its pages”.
Ngonyama said the ANC “will not be deterred by those individuals who use the platform of the mass media to further their own agenda, ambitions or careers”.
“The ANC will address the issue of the election of its national leadership, including the president, and the identification of its candidates for the 2009 elections at the appropriate time, within the structures of the organisation, and according to the democratic political traditions of the movement.
“No loyal and disciplined members of the ANC will allow themselves to be part of such campaigns, aimed at weakening and dividing the organisation and denying the ANC’s membership the right and possibility to choose their own leaders,” said Ngonyama. — I-Net Bridge