A lot of diverse people have said a lot of good things about the government of national unity (GNU) since it completed 100 days in office, but one has to wonder if it’s all true.
As South Africans, we are not used to a media that sings the praises of a government of the day so loudly that the choruses render us deaf. So we have no choice but to be suspicious.
Why is everyone who has been telling us that government is bad, corrupt and inefficient now suddenly telling us how good it is?
It is curious that in 1949, a year after apartheid was unleashed, Arthur Blair, under the pen name George Orwell, published his dystopian 1984.
The book traces a theme of how elites bend and twist the truth into a pretzel for nefarious ends, in other words how to use propaganda to condition the masses into toeing the line.
For fear of being accused of writing an epilogue to the book myself, let me tell you about what you have seen with your own eyes. About a week ago, and apparently without authorisation, Minister of Home Affairs Leon Schreiber signed a minute giving Ukrainian nationals visa-free access to South Africa.
A few weeks before, Minister of Basic Education Siviwe Gwarube boycotted a press conference at which President Cyril Ramaphosa announced he had signed the Bela Bill into law albeit with a proviso.
Between these two events, and continuously since, Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi has been in the news for “defying” Ramaphosa by removing Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink from his cushy job in the capital.
Is this a GNU that is doing well to you? The simplest definition of propaganda is “someone tells you your own eyes are lying to you”.
We are instructed to believe that Lesufi defied the ANC when he announced a government minus the DA despite the ANC telling us that it, through its secretary general Fikile Mbalula, led the collapsed negotiations with the DA on the composition of the Gauteng government.
So, how exactly did Lesufi defy the ANC if it was it not he who led the negotiations? Then, the clincher.
According to facts, Gwarube was not present at the announcement stated above, and Schreiber published the statement himself. That, coupled with what has transpired since makes plain objectively that these two defied Ramaphosa.
We also know that Ramaphosa has praised the unity negotiators – in other words, those who decided on a Gauteng government without the DA, or removed Brink – from his own mouth more than twice.
But the story of defiance that Lesufi defied Ramaphosa that media keep pushing is the one objective fact conclusively debunked as false. Why would there be a need to create facts and curate narratives if the GNU was working? Wouldn’t they just let facts speak for themselves?
By the way, I am not one of those analysts who would pretend they know even what they clearly couldn’t, so let me say this: it could very well be true that the GNU is working well because maybe these disagreements are not fatal but what stands out is that the purveyors of “GNU best thing since sliced cheese” narrative say nothing about the cracks we see.
In fact, not only do they say nothing, they elevate what is clearly a lie about Lesufi while downplaying the actual defiance. And it gets worse.
Yes, the ANC lost its majority in the last elections but still a huge majority of South Africans gave it the mandate to, among others, pass Bela into law. So, in other words, what Gwarube did, was not just a defying of Ramaphosa but of the citizens.
Suppose the Lesufi defiance was real, then juxtapose that with Gwarube’s, there’s no comparison.
Lesufi represents the majority of voters in Gauteng, and they instructed him to form a government, which he has done.
If the ANC didn’t want him to formulate the government as he did, he would have defied it but not the people while it would be the ANC that defied the people.
How these three stories have been told, tells us a lot about the elites and how they pay lip service to the supremacy of democracy, the Constitution and the people.
The message to Lesufi, and anyone else in the future who might be inclined to follow the people’s mandate is, “F… the citizens, we are in charge.”
Of course, that is not to say Lesufi follows the will of the people, in general – maybe it was just his luck that his own desires coincided with theirs. But the elites don’t have that luck.
South Africa has truly entered the post-democracy era.
Now we have owned-democracy – a period in which democracy and all its institutions including elections, the constitution, are dictated to by the elites. A period in which those who step out on the elites attract demonisation even if it’s the will of the people.
- KaBizokwakhe is a columnist at large with obviously too much time on his hands to think silly things
