So the basic education ministry’s vilification this week of rights organisation Equal Education as “a group of white adults organising black African children with half truths”, in addition to being not even half true itself, lacked originality.
It is tempting merely to dismiss the matter in these terms. And there would be solid grounds: under the chaotic and lacklustre leadership of Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga, her department has lurched from one embarrassingly public catastrophe to another, and resorted repeatedly to personalised abuse of those who have tried to hold it accountable. Last year, Section27 received the ad hominem insults over textbooks in Limpopo. Now it is Equal Education’s turn, for tackling the minister on four years of delays and broken promises about publishing minimum norms and standards on school infrastructure.
But the extraordinary vitriol of her statement carried disturbing echoes of an era of a politician who celebrated his 71st birthday this week. As president, Thabo Mbeki declared war on the Treatment Action Campaign over HIV and the need for a government antiretroviral programme. When he very quickly ran out of rational arguments, he prolonged the battle in much the same terms as Motshekga and her department – by defaming and insulting his critics in relentlessly racialised terms. In both these episodes, the primary victims were, and are, the very vulnerable.
These are the historical echoes we must hear so that we can pose the right question to Zuma: Do you and your Cabinet share your colleague’s sentiments?