Skilled in the art of ducking and diving
If the ANC can’t respond clearly to a simple query, how can we trust it to handle the Covid vaccine rollout?
The ruling party has mastered the art of not answering a question. Last week the country was treated to the absurd spectacle of ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe trying to not reply to one.
How hard can it be? The question was: has suspended secretary-general Ace Magashule been invited to the weekend Zoom call of the National Executive Committee (NEC)?
“Everyone expected to attend the NEC meeting will attend,” he told an incredulous nation last Friday night.
It was an opportunity for a simple yes or no — words that clearly do not exist in the limited logic of the ANC.
Politicians have developed a frustrating ability to avoid any statement for which they can be held accountable. Mabe gave a master class in the party’s art of relentless obfuscation.
Last month we had the mortifying spectacle of chair Gwede Mantashe at the Zondo commission trying to convince the country there is a difference between “cadre deployment” and the “deployment of cadres”.
Remember arguably the most inept deployee ever, SA Revenue Service head of IT Mmamathe MakhekheMokhuane, who in 2019 told the SABC’s Sakina Kamwendo during a live interview: “Ma’am, can you give me protection from yourself.”?
If the people who govern our country cannot give a straightforward answer to a straightforward question, how are we going to trust them during the second year of the pandemic, when the long-delayed vaccine rollout is finally starting to happen?
The whole world knows exactly what is going on with Magashule and his on-again, off-again threat of refusing to step aside or face suspension.
The ANC seemingly wants to be rid of a man charged with 74 counts of alleged corruption in a diabolical R230m scam that left millions of people living under deadly asbestos roofs. This is an opportunity for the party to redeem itself by expelling a top official who has flaunted his impunity with a vigour matched only by former #Presidunce Jacob Zuma.
What purpose does it serve for the ANC, which wants to be seen as a reformist organisation trying to escape the taint of state capture — in which it is “accused number one”, as President Cyril Ramaphosa has described his own party? Why not just say: “No, Magashule is not invited. We understand what step aside or suspension means, even if he doesn’t.”?
But the party is so used to quicktalking its way out of trouble — like a schoolboy caught breaking the rules knowing that he’s going to be punished but foolishly trying to talk his way out of it — that it can’t see when it is in a morally superior position, especially against its own disgraced secretary-general.
For once the ANC was behaving honourably over Magashule, even if some of its senior officials refused to.
But it’s in the ANC’s nature to obfuscate even when it is doing the right thing. How can we trust them to administer the vaccines efficiently?
It’s part of the ANC’s mode of operating to obfuscate even when it’s doing the right thing