Dear Ferial,
I have observed, with a growing degree of trepidation, the slide of the Mail & Guardian down the slippery slope of sensationalism. Final proof of the dire levels to which this once-proud newspaper has sunk must surely be the article about the ”gravy plane” that the Speaker of Parliament, Baleka Mbete, is supposed to have boarded (”Now the Speaker joins the jet set”, March 24).
Mbete visited me at my home in January this year. She mentioned that she had been invited to attend the inauguration of Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, but that she was having terrible problems finding a flight there. The first problem was that the most reliable airliners only fly to Liberia via Europe and she expressed a principled opposition to flying to a fellow African country via Europe.
The second problem was that the only airline operating into Liberia from Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire was the small airline that had a fatal crash sometime last year, in which the wife of the Nigerian president was killed. Baleka was not at all willing to make use of that airline. Interestingly enough, the day after the M&G‘s slander, the Saturday Star published an article on the recent blacklisting of a number of African airliners by the European Union, which included that airline. The third problem was that she could not afford to be away from Parliament for more than a few days, since the opening of Parliament was due in approximately a month from the date of our conversation.
I told her that I have a friend who lives in Liberia and another friend of mine, who works at a travel agent had organised for him to fly to South Africa as recently as December 2005. I volunteered to explore the possibilities, which I did. As early as January 10 2006, the travel agent, could only find flights into Liberia that would take the passenger through Europe, with the ill-fated small airliner mentioned earlier or with South African Airways (SAA), which would take her away from the country for nine days.
And a friend of mine had not had a good experience on SAA, trying to fly to Johannesburg from Monrovia via the Côte d’Ivoire.
Did you consider before publishing that Mbete is a leading gender activist on the African continent and has been at the forefront of the struggle for the emancipation of women for more than 30 years?
She is the Speaker of South Africa’s Parliament and was invited in an official capacity to attend the inauguration of Africa’s first woman president.
In short, she had all the right in the world to be invited and attend the inauguration.
Due to the pitiful state of Africa’s airliners, she could not find a flight to Liberia that would address all three problems mentioned earlier.
The South African Defence Force is responsible for the flight arrangements of members of the Cabinet, and when there is no suitable commercial option available, it would recommend the use of a military airplane. This does not apply to the Speaker of Parliament.
The president and the minister of foreign affairs probably had other destinations to fly to from Liberia, but it appears that you do not know that in South Africa the constitutional model is one based on the separation of powers, with the consequence that the executive, the judiciary and the legislature are separate institutions.
Further, there is no reason why Mbete should have been accommodated in the travel arrangements of either the president or the minister of foreign affairs. To summarise this point I would like to paraphrase a well-known recent tongue-in-cheek remark: ”Parliament is not a sub-committee of the Cabinet.” [The African National Congress secretary general, Kgalema Motlanthe, recently remarked that the ANC is not a sub-committee of Cabinet.]
There appears to be a general weakness among journalists in under-standing how the country operates, not only in terms of the separation of powers, but also in relation to the competencies of different spheres of governance. This not only detracts from the quality of the articles, but also undermines one’s confidence in the media.
Could you consider the scandal that would surely have followed the insult of Mbete, gender activist of long standing and female Speaker of the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa, not attending the inauguration of Africa’s first female president?
The only merit in the article is that the reporter acknowledged that the chartered option eventually chosen was probably the most suitable.
But more than the journalist, how did you, Ferial, someone that we all respect and admire for your professional integrity, allow that piece of nonsense to be printed? And how did you make it your headline for the week?
Yours,
Uriel Llewellyn Abrahamse
Uriel Llewellyn Abrahamse is the deputy general manager of the African National Congress. He writes in his personal capacity
Dear Uriel
You say the Mail & Guardian is on the ”slippery slope of sensationalism”, possibly because of our stance on corruption.
But to read African National Congress president Thabo Mbeki’s pre-election speeches this year is to see that even he thinks the country is in the quicksands of corruption and cronyism. So deep has the cancer bitten that new councillors had to pledge against graft in their oath of office. Could it be that we merely reflect this dystopia?
But to the issue at hand: Speaker Baleka Mbete’s trip to Liberia is not cronyism or corruption and was not treated as such.
It was an even-handed story that gave as much space to Parliament’s explanation of the R470 000 ticket price as it did to the news at hand: there was nothing illegal about the charter, it was done in terms of the rules and there is a paper trail to show that the Speaker tried to take the cheaper routes.
But does that make it right? Or un-newsworthy? In a poor country of such vast disparities in wealth, where is the perspective in blowing almost half a million rands on a chartered flight? Why not go via Europe? It is of course heartily unpalatable that to fly in Africa you have to still go via Europe, but the price is a high one to pay for an ideological stand.
Never mind the numbers of houses that half a million bucks could build or the water connections it could pay for or the social grants it could fund, the money would arguably have been better spent even funding Parliament as an institution. Its research capacity is abysmal and the quality of debates therefore soporific.
MPs work on claptraps, not computers.
Your point about the separation of powers is well taken: we cannot just have expected that the Speaker should have hitched a ride with the president, but where is the adherence to the doctrine when it counts? Parliament is under-resourced and therefore almost toothless.
ANC MPs do not use their independent space to exercise oversight; they rubber-stamp.
Just this year, for example, the National Council of Provinces decided to overturn National Assembly changes to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa Amendment Bill; changes that sought to ensure the regulator’s independence.
And last month the ethics committee also mimicked the executive’s response to a damning auditor general report on the undeclared business interests of Cabinet members as well as of senior civil servants instead of exercising the oversight it enjoys.
But the problem is deeper, the issue different.
Perhaps I am old fashioned (and more and more I realise these views may in fact be arcane) in believing that a peoples’ government should rule humbly and with as little show and pomp as possible.
We don’t need a public-sector jet set or even the cavalcades of shiny black sedans that so regularly tear down our highways and careering past the ordinary folk.
It is too ”us” and ”them”; too reminiscent of post-independence elites across Latin America and the rest of Africa.
I have a dream that the children of MPs go to public schools, that ministers fly economy class and MPs come to work on bicycles or even the train. It is a lonely dream.
Yours
Ferial Haffajee