Politicians, including Ramaphosa, need to learn to apologise
JEFF Radebe’s lewd entanglement with a lass half his age, apart from revealing the hubris and social entitlement of powerful men, also shows the utter incompetence or inability of our politicians in dealing with events or publicity that could easily scupper their careers.
The instinctive reaction of politicians when confronted by such embarrassing details is to bury their heads in the sand, hoping the thing will go away. It doesn’t.
As far as scandals go, Radebe’s impropriety is small beer. No china was broken. Two people involved in this tête-à-tête are thoroughly humiliated, and a spouse is enraged.
But everybody, not least politicians, should be mindful of how they treat or relate to women, especially at this time when it seems women are hunted like animals, murdered and their bodies incinerated. It’s a chilling scenario, a hell on earth.
Radebe has apologised for his behaviour, but it was three weeks too late. And it seems some of his supporters are tempted to use his misdeed as an argument to launch his bid for higher office.
“It takes a real man to apologise,” Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is quoted as saying. “This is the kind of leadership we require.”
Madikizela-Mandela, who seemed keen to take the credit for inducing Radebe’s mea culpa, has skeletons of her own for which she has yet to say sorry.
Radebe should have apologised three weeks before the story was published, instead of trying to play hideand-seek with the Sunday Times.
The only way to deal effectively with such an undeniable misdemeanour is full disclosure. Release all the facts yourself and apologise unconditionally. Spit it out and grovel profusely. There will be embarrassment aplenty, but after that the story tends not to come back to haunt you. People are often receptive to a genuine apology.
What gives such stories legs is often not the actual event, but the denials, obfuscations, lies and even attempts to intimidate journalists and their editors. Often politicians don’t understand that threatening the media can be futile, even counterproductive. That’s when your little transgression gets pride of place in the newspaper and on the radio.
What ultimately destroyed Richard Nixon’s presidency, for instance, was not the actual burglary at Watergate, but the crude lies and attempts by Nixon and his cronies to obstruct the course of justice.
But, for me at least, the textbook example of how to deal with a scandal that can potentially destroy a political career belongs to Bill Clinton. During the Democratic Party primaries in 1992, Clinton had already survived several revelations by women who claimed to have had affairs with him when he discovered that one of the TV networks had a copy of a letter he wrote as a young man pleading not to be drafted into the Vietnam War. It was explosive stuff. The Vietnam escapade was and still is a powerful drag on the American psyche. The letter was going to blow his presidential campaign out of the water.
James Carville, one of his aides, turned to him: “This,” he said, waving the letter, “is our friend!”
Clinton looked at him, utterly perplexed. But a press conference was arranged at which Clinton read the letter himself and sat there until reporters had run out of questions.
Clinton believed people watching in their living rooms would understand that a teenager won’t happily look forward to going to war. The trick worked like a charm, and Clinton went on to be president.
The irony is that when, as president, Clinton faced the Monica Lewinsky affair, he failed to follow his script. He obfuscated until he was exposed as a liar, and almost lost the presidency.
Unfortunately there’s often no incentive for politicians in South Africa to either tell the truth or face up to their transgressions. We’re a forgiving nation. Politicians are rewarded, not punished, for stepping out of line. Our president, for instance, soared to high office, dragging a Christmas tree of outrageous scandals.
His putative successors have monkeys of their own on their backs. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has yet to account for the Sarafina! debacle. She doesn’t look the remorseful type.
And one cannot come across the word “concomitant” without thinking of Cyril Ramaphosa and the Marikana massacre.
The other day, prompted by a questioner, he made a perfunctory apology. A more meaningful and heartfelt apology is often one that is unprovoked. Ramaphosa can argue that he’s done nothing wrong. But in politics, perception is reality, and Marikana has become such an emotional, even toxic, issue. It was a watershed event.
He needs to make that pilgrimage to Marikana, to that koppie, and make his sincerest apologies there. That way he would not only take the sting out of what has become bothersome to him, but would set a fine example for society.
Spit it out and grovel profusely. After that the story tends not to come back to haunt you