Publication: Business Day Issued: Date: 2007-11-28 Reporter: SC Weiss

Glorious Cause to Grubby Party

 

Publication 

Business Day
Date 2007-11-28
Reporter S.C. Weiss

Web Link

www.businessday.co.za

 

The fascinating thing about reading Andrew Feinstein's book, After the Party, is not how much one doesn't know, but rather how much one does. His account largely provides the gory detail. By and large, the independent media has done an admirable job in exposing *1 much of what Feinstein now reveals.

As an aside, Feinstein disproves (in some instances) the old saying that you can't judge a book by its cover. Essop Pahad, Joe Modise, Tony Yengeni, Vincent Smith and Alec Erwin are as they appear to be. If the ANC thinks that South Africans can be fooled and kept ignorant just by denial and silence, our media proves that they are wasting their time.

The work of the media has disclosed our leadership in all its mendacious and arrogant glory. The attacks by President Thabo Mbeki and others on the media are not a sign of media failure, but one of success.

The leitmotiv of the ANC has always been the primacy of the good of the party over the individual. So how on earth has the collective might of the ANC managed to allow itself to be completely reshaped in the image of Mbeki? Or is it simply that it was inevitable, because of that supposed collective primacy, that the ANC had to move from glorious (if sometimes flawed and over-romanticised) liberation movement to grubby little political party with many little snouts in the trough.

Are there any members of the ANC with voting rights at next month's congress who have the courage and integrity to demand that neither Mbeki nor Jacob Zuma stand for the presidency of the ANC because both have relinquished their moral right to do so? The hubris of both men may be the nemesis of the ANC. The ANC and its members may deserve that; the people of SA do not.

SC Weiss
Parktown North

With acknowledgements to S.C. Weiss and Business Day.

 

*1       Wonder how they did it?