In August, President Thabo Mbeki shot himself in the foot when he fired the deputy health minister, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, on the eve of Women’s Day. This is not my own view, but that of the international media.
Consider that Mbeki is a president who venerates the international media. It is quite clear that he thinks our foreign sisters and brothers in the media rate far more highly than most South African journalists. Throughout his presidency, he has granted more interviews to foreign newspapers and broadcasters than to local ones.
He is a foreign policy president and this outward-looking media strategy must be viewed in that context. He has entrusted foreign media with his vision and his intellect. Therefore, the tone of coverage following his decision to fire the deputy minister was surprising and suggests that both his intemperate political action as well as his strategy to communicate it failed miserably.
Consider the following headlines after Madlala-Routledge’s axing and after the Sunday Times two follow-up exposes of the Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. These alleged that the minister was an alcoholic, that she had jumped the queue to receive a liver transplant and that she was a convicted thief in Botswana. This was followed by revelations that she had been treated for kleptomania.
- Crisis for President as Dr. Beetroot is accused of theft and alcoholism – Irish Times
- The Minister and the liver transplant South Africas Aids row gets personal – The Guardian
- Opposition call to sack South Africas embattled health minister – Oman Daily Observer from Agence France-Presse (AFP)
- South African official is accused but not investigated – New York Times/International Herald Tribune
- Mbeki helped minister to jump transplant queue – The Times
- SAfrican minister accused of stealing watch – Press Trust of India
- Mbeki in pickle over health minister – The Australian
I could go on the full length of this column and then many more pages besides to give you the full picture but you get a sense of the coverage out of South Africa that dominated the headlines. These kinds of headlines flashed across the globe: China, India, Kenya, Botswana, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe. It was a spin nightmare, which the president tried to end but just ended up shooting himself in the foot again. Mbeki used his weekly internet newsletter to take a swipe at the Independent in London for its coverage. His response can be summed up as: “Oh sod off the lot of you. Who says she [Madlala-Routledge] was such great shakes anyway? And she had very little to do with the national strategic plan on Aids, anyway!”
For this, the president received further brickbats in the international media. What went wrong besides the action of dismissal itself? Mbeki’s strategy of ignoring the national media and focusing on the international media is now clearly wrong-headed. Most communication strategists know that the foreign media is generally led by the local media in setting its agenda.
In addition, Mbeki has not had a decent spokesman since Bheki Khumalo left for corporate life. There are few presidency briefings and he did not prepare the ground before axing Madlala-Routledge. This could have been done by an off the record briefing which did not happen. Instead, all the media got was a statement at about midnight and then the usual defensive, argumentative position that characterises the work of incumbent spokesman Mukhoni Ratshitanga. He bet reporters their salary packets that the president did not and would not explain his action.
Two days later, and after the media went to town, the presidency released the letter explaining Mbeki’s action. Ratshitanga would have earned some political space for his boss had he done so earlier and properly briefed those media who supported the view of presidential prerogative to hire and fire. He would also have secured space even in more critical media.
It’s little surprise that Mbeki is ending his term railing at the media. In the past months, the Daily Dispatch, Financial Mail, Sunday Times and Independent (London) have come in for a drubbing in his weekly internet newsletter. As Mbeki enters the final two years in office, he would do well to look inward rather than outward at his media image.
Ferial Haffajee is the editor of the Mail & Guardian