SACP lays into ‘biased’ media

THE SACP has laid the blame for the crisis besetting Cosatu and the ANCled tripartite alliance on the media, accusing them of conniving with its political opponents to discredit them.

It said it had seen “massive media coverage of an anti-SACP and antiANC malicious content” since the expulsion of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) from Cosatu.

“Such ‘analysis’

is trivial, disingenuous, misleading and factionalist, to say the least. Such malicious content becomes worse when it is presented as ‘independent analysis’,” said Solly Mapaila, the SACP’s second deputy general secretary.

He singled out South African Institute of International Affairs deputy chairman Moeletsi Mbeki, Centre for the Study of Democracy director Steven Friedman and columnist Max du Preez.

“Propaganda cannot be an independent analysis, which is why the likes of Moeletsi Mbeki, who… was actively involved in architecting the failed DA and AgangSA marriage in the context of being a Polokwane (malcontent), are among those propagating against it (anti-tripartite alliance).”

Mapaila said Du Preez’s writing “fit the conservative mould of the continuous anti-ANC-led alliance agenda” post-1994.

On Friedman, Mapaila said: “Professor Steven Friedman’s ‘independent analysis’… is inevitably diametrically opposed to the truth.”