Mamoepa a humble emissary with insight and integrity

On Saturday night news of the death of deputy presidential spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa spread like wildfire and stoked up fierce memories of what he had come to represent in and out of government circles.

No number of platitudes will bring comfort to his family, who were beginning to enjoy being with him after all the time he poured into the liberation struggle.

Mamoepa is a monument to sacrifice and excellence. After the ANC came into power there was no blueprint about how a liberation movement should communicate its message of revolution and electoral support to drum up support ahead of the 1994 elections.

Similarly, the ANC had a major propaganda war on its hands: to change the perception painted by the apartheid machinery of a terrorist organisation to that of a political party that was ready to govern.

I don’t remember a more robust ANC spokesman since the 1994 period. Mamoepa was more than a mere conveyor belt of information, he was the very crucible where progressive messages were crafted for the new revolutionary course facing a movement that had, until then, only known how to be underground.

Naturally, he became a point of reference for all other spokespersons of the ANC trying to make sense of the new reality of liberation. In fact, I believe the ANC needed a lot less toning down of party hacks after Ronnie.

He often left me wondering whether he had made up some of the ANC positions on issues that had no precedence. He was highly disciplined, though, owing to his deep political roots in the movement, making his transition to being a public servant all the smoother.

Of course, he was not spared the political ill winds of our time, otherwise he would have been a presidential spokesman up until the time of his death.

Many communications professionals and ministers held him in high regard and he would probably have been the most appropriate person to occupy the post of CEO of the Government Communications and Information System after Themba Maseko, a post that requires political maturity only a few possess.

I am convinced Mamoepa was way ahead of his time in terms of understanding how a political party ought to position itself.

His dynamism as a messenger of good tidings was well rewarded by the roles he played in rebuilding our democracy, but his talents were wasted compared to his role as an ANC spokesman in the early 1990s.

What he gave us in the latter years was a watered-down version of himself (often happy to stick to a media release he would have crafted carefully and not giving away too much).

But his political consciousness was heightened and his friends will tell you how fed up he was with what the ANC had become as a movement and his having to put out a message he sometimes found impossible to repackage.

His professional trajectory is full of lessons for current and future communicators in the public sector.

Accessibility is the overarching lesson. It would be hard to find a news story now where a journalist complained Mamoepa was unavailable for comment.

Humility is an even bigger lesson. He wittingly used humour to disarm, no matter how aggressive the approach.

Journalists knew to have their story straight before getting him to comment on anything spurious.

He never used his credentials as a struggle veteran to get a point across.

Finally, Mamoepa knew there was no substitute for hard work and loyalty. It is for this reason that his principals found him totally dependable.

Death be not proud, because you came around after Ronnie Mamoepa had planted much seed. May his wonderful soul rest in peace as we pick up his revolutionary spear.

HE WAS AHEAD OF HIS TIME IN TERMS OF UNDERSTANDING HOW A POLITICAL PARTY OUGHT TO POSITION ITSELF

Tabane is author of Let’s Talk Frankly and host of Power Perspective on Power FM.