National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel on Wednesday stood by his critical letter to government head of communications Jimmy Manyi.
“One of the battles we have is a battle against forgetting,” he told the South African National Editors’ Forum in Johannesburg.
“The Constitution we have was not forced down the throats [of freedom fighters] by the apartheid regime …”
The Constitution was based on principles established by former African National Congress president Oliver Tambo, as well as the Freedom Charter.
“… for me, the Freedom Charter is older than what I am … it doesn’t deviate from the opening statement that South Africa belongs to all … we will fight side by side … when something impedes that liberty I will take up the fight again.
“Someone has to sound the wake-up call.”
Manuel hit out at Manyi over his comments on coloured people, branding him a “worst-order racist” in an open letter published on Wednesday.
He added: “I have a sense that your racism has infiltrated the highest echelons of government.”
Manuel is chairperson of the national executive committee sent to the Western Cape to help the ANC regroup ahead of local government elections, after losing the province to the Democratic Alliance in 2009.
In his letter, he said he would “do battle” to ensure Parliament did not pass amendments to the Employment Equity Act drafted on Manyi’s watch if they violated the non-racial spirit of the Constitution.
“I want to draw your attention to the fact that your statements about ‘an over-concentration of coloureds’ are against the letter and spirit of the South African Constitution, as well as being against the values espoused by the Black Management Forum since its inception,” Manuel wrote.
Manyi, then the director general of labour, said in a show broadcast on KykNET’s Robinson Regstreeks in March 2010 that there was an “over supply” of coloureds in the Western Cape.
Moral choice
Meanwhile, the ANC withheld any support for Manuel’s scathing attack on Manyi as the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) sided with him and pressure piled on the government spokesperson over his controversial race remarks.
In the ruling party’s only comment on Manuel’s outburst against Manyi, secretary general Gwede Mantashe hinted that the ANC heavyweight and planning minister in the Presidency had acted without the party’s backing. “He does not want our view. If he wanted our view he would have written a letter to us. He went into the open. We won’t join the match, we won’t get into that mud with him,” Mantashe said.
Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi said he agreed that Manyi’s statement about an “over-concentration” of coloured people in the Western Cape was racist and further comments along this line would call into question his fitness for high office.
“I agree with Manuel. He is right. That remark of Jimmy’s was a most unfortunate statement ever to be made in a democracy,” Vavi said. “It is a bizarre statement. I don’t know what he had smoked to make that statement … It is absolutely racist, in fact you can’t put it in any other words.
“We’ll be checking very carefully as to whether he will be making other such statements because it then calls into [question his] fitness …. whether he is fit for the position that he has just been promoted to if he harbours such views.”
Manuel’s former Mbeki-era Cabinet colleague Kader Asmal urged the government to make a moral choice between the views of Manuel and those of Manyi.
“Minister Manuel deserves the support and praise of all right-thinking South Africans,” Asmal said in a statement.
“The choice facing us is very clear: do we stand behind the humane and generous values of Minister Manuel, or do we, by staying silent, lend our support to the mischievous and dangerous notions of Mr Manyi.”
‘I call it the power of bargaining’
The DA urged President Jacob Zuma to fire Manyi, after releasing a recording of remarks he made about Indian South Africans last year while still director general of labour.
“Indians, we should be having only 3% [of positions on management]. They are sitting at 5,9%. I call it the power of bargaining. Indians have bargained their way to the top,” Manyi said in an address delivered to the Durban Chamber of Commerce last year.
The DA’s federal chairperson, Wilmot James, said the address was recorded by SAfm radio on February 20 last year, a month before his controversial remarks about coloured people on KykNET.
“The DA today calls on President Zuma to dismiss his government spokesperson, Jimmy Manyi,” he said.
Manyi, also president of the Black Management Forum, confirmed he had made the remarks in his Durban address, but said they were in jest.
“The remarks were made in jest; just a jest, on a light note. I was quoting figures at the time. The remark was really just made in jest,” he said.
He refused to react to Manuel’s letter. — Sapa