Emboldened by the acquittal of Jacob Zuma, leaders of the African National Congress and South African Communist Party youth leagues have become more strident than usual, and the politics of demagogy threaten to choke the national discourse.
Why, I’ve wondered this past week, have their various mad ramblings gone unchecked? The ANC Youth League labelled the woman who dared to lay the rape charge against Zuma a “Lucifer” and defamed her by claiming that she had been paid off. No proof was presented, but their vile views were given a national airing, with no offence noted and no significant questions reported about the press conference where they spewed their bile.
It is no longer enough for our nation to dismiss them as hot-headed youth who will learn something when they eventually grow up.
Many senior ANC figures are too petrified to call the youth leaders to order, fearing that they too will be labelled part of an elaborate anti-Zuma conspiracy.
Are watchdog bodies like the Human Rights Commission also running scared? Terrified that league spokesperson Zizi Kodwa will “beat [the dogs] hard so that their handlers will reveal themselves” — the inimitable words of his recent threat to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) reportedly made outside the court? What else can explain the silence of the Presidency and of the Justice Department as this institution’s public credibility is dragged through the mud?
The media are so enthralled by Zuma and so worried they will be accused of “embedded journalism”, as Kodwa so delicately put it on these pages last week, that we report this nonsense with all the seriousness that we give to affairs of state.
Should we really tolerate their misanthropy and misogyny because some among us believe that, with the fire of youth, they speak truth to power? Because they “stand up” to President Thabo Mbeki in the face of older ANC members who are too power-drunk and sycophantic to say they do not like what he has made of the ANC?
There is a lot in the ANC that is questionable, and the only way to secure change, goes one argument, is to support Zuma and his youthful foot soldiers. They are to our era what Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu were to theirs: the spears of the nation; the firecrackers up our apathetic, neoliberal arse.
This is pure drivel, of course. Today’s youth office bearers are not the first “young lions” to employ militant phraseology, but militancy does not equal political leadership. This argument also suggests that to help secure better internal democracy in the ANC, we should stand by and watch the Young Turks trample on precious freedoms. This logic is faulty for three reasons.
Firstly, it is politically bankrupt to suggest that the only way to open space in the ANC is to close it in wider society by subjecting ourselves silently to the tainted politics we now witness.
Secondly, one responsibility of freedom is respect for the Constitution and its supporting institutions. That the NPA, an organisation that by and large has carried out its mandate effectively, is so publicly maligned is as much cause for concern as the attempts by the government to alter the powers of the judiciary.
And since when did the ANC Youth League become an independent critic of the NPA? It’s worth noting that the league appears to have had a cosy relationship with the late Brett Kebble. A significant chunk of money siphoned from his various companies was allegedly used to bankroll the league, which began attacking the NPA when it dared to begin looking at Kebble’s financial affairs.
Thirdly, the Constitution enshrines gender equality in its founding provisions. In the course of the trial, both leagues exposed the poverty of their commitment to a non-sexist South Africa. They can talk all they want about opposing women abuse, but outside the trial, on their watch, calls were made to “burn the bitch”. Now she is a “Lucifer” paid for laying the charge, spirited out of the country by her “handlers”.
Where is the commitment to the rule of law in this?
As if there were any doubt of their misogyny, they have now started campaigning against a woman president. Because Mbeki dared to say last week that the next president of South Africa should be a woman, his statement is read as part of the “anti-Zuma conspiracy”.
Before they begin attacking the concept of a woman president as vigorously as they have the NPA, democratic-minded women and men must speak up.
There is no reason not to lobby for a woman president — after all, women make up half the population. And the old barriers are coming down everywhere, as recently underlined by the voters in Chile, Liberia, Jamaica and Germany.
South Africa should not be silenced by the fire and brimstone of the youth leaders. This is neither Cambodia nor Rwanda: we should tolerate no 21st-century impersonations of Pol Pot or the Interahamwe. The meek only inherit a scorched earth.
Ferial Haffajee is the editor