Speaker’s slur

HAD ANC stalwart Kgalema Motlanthe been asked for his view on Speaker Baleka Mbete describing Julius Malema as a cockroach, he would probably have torn a strip off her.

For that is what he did in November 2010, after the ANC’s young gun had referred to DA leader Helen Zille as a cockroach: “I think that it’s a bad thing,” he said. “I think it’s downright simple bad manners.”

It is much more than that: it has a chilling connotation after the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, when up to a million people were killed. The word was used to dehumanise Tutsis before the 100-day slaughter began.

It was first used on a private radio station there, stirring hate and instigating bloodshed. Muammar Gaddafi also used it as an insult to Libyan rebels not long before his government was overthrown.

The word has an established history of incitement and, veteran that she is, Mbete would have been fully aware of this. If she did not realise what she was getting into, she should be disqualified from politics.

She could have described Malema in many other ways. Already under fire for simultaneously holding the posts of Speaker and ANC chairwoman, Mbete should have given the word the widest berth.

It was merely a term, the ANC said later, there had been no echoes of Rwanda or intent to incite.

ON CALLS for her to retract and apologise, National Council of Provinces chairwoman, Thandi Modise, told a press conference on Tuesday it was best left to the Speaker to deal with. At the right time, she would do so.

Yesterday, Mbete issued an unreserved and unconditional apology for her remark after thinking about it “long and hard” – on the same day the SA Human Rights Commission confirmed it had received a complaint from a member of the public.

Let it be a lesson for Mbete that she is intrinsically linked to her position as Speaker, even if the utterance was made at an ANC rally. And this kind of insult should never be repeated.