A proxy for our impotence

Steven Friedman is in a spin (SA still needs to talk despite crooked spin, July 12). “But justifiable outrage at Bell Pottinger and its Oakbay campaign has also spawned a myth” that “much of the reaction assumes that the company invented the notion that there is racial exclusion in the economy, that it created division where none existed and that the idea that the marketplace in SA is still stacked against black participation was purely the figment of a PR campaign”.

Friedman’s modus operandi is to imbue the middle class, particularly white, with political blindness and ignorance in order to launch a critique that is generally false. South Africans are painfully aware of the longevity of “white monopoly capital” (WMC) and similarly propagandistic phrases.

However, WMC got a new lease on life in President Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation address. What then happened is what political leadership intended — it became an official part of the lexicon with which to demonise white business and disguise government failures.

Friedman is wrong; Bell Pottinger has not discredited conversation about one of our most pressing problems. Because WMC is not the problem. It’s an alleged problem that its proponents wish us to consider as most pressing. And as for our anger at Bell Pottinger, this is mostly a proxy for the impotence we feel over our inability to rid ourselves of those really responsible for our malaise. It is also fun to express outrage at a foreign, arrogant public relations firm. Whatever its managers had in mind when they repackaged a propagandistic slur, they didn’t intend to be found out.

SC Weiss Parktown North