Zuma appeals for calm as Dlamini remains in post

PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma has dismissed calls to axe Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini over the pension grant crisis, saying such calls were premature.

In an SABC interview, Zuma said Dlamini could only be judged after April 1 and called on the nation to remain calm despite the Social Development Department having yet to spell out plans for the payment of grants come April.

“There is no way the country can fail to pay its pensioners and I would suggest that the nation should really calm down and wait for the date,” said Zuma.

“It is unfortunate that people have been going ahead of the event in this matter,” he said in an interview from Jakarta in Indonesia, where he is attending the Indian Ocean Rim Association Business Summit. Zuma said people spoke of the pension grant crisis as if the deadline had come and gone.

“Others are calling, for example, for the dismissal of the minister, but the date has not come. How do you judge a person before the event?

“I would really like to appeal that people should calm down and wait for the 1st (of April) as to what is going to happen,” Zuma said before calling on ministers to focus on ensuring the payments were made.

He made the comments amid reports that Dlamini was scheduled to meet top ANC officials in Cape Town yesterday.

ANC communications manager Khusela Sangoni earlier confirmed the officials’ meeting, but would not be drawn into commenting on it.

This took place as calls grew from political parties and civil society groups for Dlamini to step down or be axed from her post.

The standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) is expecting the beleaguered minister to brief it on the pension grant debacle today.

Scopa chairperson Themba Godi has said they had not received any correspondence from the minister regarding the meeting, adding that the committee would decide what to do if Dlamini did not show up as was the case last week.

On Friday, the Constitutional Court is due to hear an application lodged by Black Sash in connection with the pension grant contract.

THE job of a media spokesperson is similar to that of a journalist. Indeed, many spokespeople are former journalists. One similarity is the unwritten law that neither should become the story.

A spokesperson must ensure that their principal’s message is conveyed. A journalist must get the whole message, unwinding the spin if necessary. When either of them ends up being the news, they’ve failed – because that’s not their job.

Lumka Oliphant, a former colleague, now notorious for being Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini’s spokesperson, has failed.

At first she was censured for her overly chauvinistic defence of her principal against allegations of drunkenness on duty, resorting to phraseology that was not just unbecoming of her post, but served to further tarnish her minister – and herself – and not refute the original accusations.

Now, as 17 million South Africans ponder the possibility of a month without the social grants they so desperately rely on to survive, because of a crisis that appears more and more to be solely of the minister’s making, inspired apparently by a desire to retain a supplier at all costs despite a Constitutional Court order to the contrary, Oliphant has done it again.

On Sunday she could have been excused, at a push perhaps, of over-zealously guarding her principal from hostile questions at a press conference – even though the minister had called it. But her performance yesterday on local talk radio station 702 truly pushed her beyond the pale.

Irrespective of whether she had asked to be on air, or whether presenter Xolani Gwala had invited her to ensure that her minister’s side was heard, Oliphant’s decision to conduct herself in isiZulu was nonsensical.

For a start, it’s not her home language. Second, it’s not the language of the majority of the show’s listeners, so it’s very difficult to understand what, if anything, she was trying to achieve.

As Gwala told her repeatedly: “You have the right to speak in whatever language you want, but you must respect the medium.”

When Oliphant wouldn’t, he cut her off – as he was perfectly entitled to do. Gwala could just as well have told her to respect the listeners, who as citizens are her principal’s bosses, and Oliphant’s too.

Instead, Oliphant’s conduct smacked of the same contemptuous arrogance as Dlamini’s – and explains better than any words ever could just how we find ourselves in the mess we do.