Not owning narrative lands us in a mess

Owning the narrative has become one of those buzzwords in recent years, loved by political advisers, lobbyists and public relations experts. Being a specialist in neither literature nor public relations, I’m not in a position to give a lesson on how the term evolved from being about mere storytelling.

While there is no need to dwell on US President Donald Trump’s outrageous tweet about SA’s land reform programme, not least because his famously short attention span probably means he’s moved on to the next distraction and he hopefully won’t be giving SA another thought, the rant did provoke a lot of editorial comment across the world, with varying degrees of quality. How much damage it has inflicted on the country is still open to question.

It was while reading a particularly bad editorial from one of the international publications, displaying only slightly more knowledge than Trump, who they were ostensibly attacking for his ignorance on the matter, that it dawned on me that perhaps President Cyril Ramaphosa’s army of advisers have something to answer for.

They obviously hadn’t been following their counterparts with regard to this trend of “owning the narrative’’ because this is something they failed to do from day one.

From the start, it was a bit of a mess. That late evening announcement on July 31 immediately brought comparisons with Jacob Zuma’s midnight cabinet purges at the height of the “state capture” saga. All of a sudden “new dawn” was transformed to “more of the same’’. Looking at the international coverage this week, the idea that we had long lost the narrative on this particular story was reinforced.

The president published an article in the Financial Times in which he implied that the sole reason for the proposed constitutional amendment on land expropriation was to “make explicit the conditions under which land could justifiably be expropriated without compensation”.

This, of course, is far away from what was being discussed by the editorial boards in these international publications, whose constituents are the businesses and individuals Ramaphosa is trying to entice into the country to meet his $100bn foreign investment target and rebuild the economy.

Unfortunately for him and the country, the narrative out there hasn’t been about some tweak to achieve a longstanding objective that is perfectly within the existing laws of the country.

The headlines have been about a decisive shift or “lurch to populism” in SA’s policy, inviting misinformed comparisons with Zimbabwe’s land grabs and everything that’s happened there since the early 2000s.

One could choose to be defensive and blame it all on lazy editorial writers with their preconceived prejudices, but the source of the confusion can be found closer to home.

I went back to read Ramaphosa’s original statement, which is no clearer today than it was then. It goes to great lengths to explain why a proper reading of the constitution allows the state to “effect expropriation of land with just and equitable compensation and also expropriation without compensation in the public interest”.

Then there is a huge leap to telling readers that the intention of the proposed amendment is “to promote redress, advance economic development, increase agricultural production and food security”.

No matter how many times you read it, you won’t find an explanation of how the current language in the constitution prevents this. The willingness to listen to ordinary people who were at the time taking part in public hearings on land reform is commendable, but attempting to use those voices to justify meddling with the constitution will rightly concern people.

“It has become patently clear that our people want” should as a principle never be used as an argument for a change in our supreme law, which is there to offer protection against the will of both the state and the majority. What will happen at some future date when “our people” demand that “we” reinstate the death penalty or take away women’s reproductive rights?

Now imagine if we could rewind to July 31 and the ANC’s lekgotla had just finished, and the president had delivered an alternative speech.

As in the one he eventually read, he could speak about our constitution and the values enshrined, especially the way it skillfully managed to balance the need for justice and redress with a commitment to property rights and rule of law.

Some may disagree about the sanctity of property rights but that’s a debate for another day.

Then he would acknowledge how his party had failed to make sufficient progress despite the lack of constitutional or legal impediments, and say that the ANC would be urgently looking at accelerating land reform, including expropriation without compensation, as mandated in the constitution.

ATTEMPTING TO USE THE VOICES AT PUBLIC HEARINGS TO JUSTIFY MEDDLING WITH THE CONSTITUTION WILL RIGHTLY CONCERN PEOPLE