‘WAR ROOM’ DIRT WILL ALWAYS DOG THE ANC
THE first instinct is shock. Then outrage. And finally, you say: “But why are we surprised? This, after all, is politics. And politics is dirty.”
Except the story about the alleged war room that the ANC masterminded in the build-up to the last election in a bid to smear opposition parties, at an alleged cost of R50million, is not as simple as that.
Ordinary South Africans wouldn’t have known of this ambitious campaign had there not been a fallout between those who were central to it. That it has come to our attention is thanks, in large part, to Sihle Bolani who this week took the ANC to the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg for what she claims is R2.2-million owed to her company for work done for the ruling party during the election.
In papers before court, Bolani claims the campaign featured, among other things, a fake EFF poster which showed Julius Malema holding an AK-47 and exhorting the electorate to vote EFF “or else”.
In broad terms, the idea was to enhance the ANC’s profile on social media, at the expense of the DA and the EFF, which were the proverbial thorns in the flesh of the ruling party in the build-up to the elections.
My sense of shock stemmed from the fact that having spent so much money, the ruling party still performed so dismally all round. Was the ruling party that desperate?
Look, I am not naïve. I know that in many established democracies there are no moral fetters as to how one conducts a political campaign. You fight with whatever you have.
If telling the electorate that your adversary is gay or lesbian – and you believe that mining the homophobic nerve of the electorate will do the job – then you go with it. If you want to appeal to a section of the electorate that is conservative, religious, familyoriented, maybe to beat your adversary you can portray him as an adulterous, Godless, paedophilic drunk.
This is politics. It’s dirty. The more “modernised” we get, the more noxious the fumes of political discourse. We will recall how, in 2008, Donald Trump suddenly started a campaign, a very costly one at that, meant to prove that Barack Obama was not born in the US, therefore could not rightfully and constitutionally be allowed to be president of that country.
But Trump, the veteran of unscrupulous Wall Street boardroom games, did not stop there: pointing out that Obama’s full names were Barack Hussein Obama, hoping to appeal to the Islamophobic sentiment of the electorate, just in case the xenophobic spin was not enough.
That smear still did not work. But it did rattle Obama and his campaign. The fires of xenophobia were rekindled. Those fires burned brightly during the last election. Fake news and smear campaign against his adversaries – both fellow Republicans and Democrats – were used by Trump.
Look where he is now: on top of the most powerful pedestal in the world. Ironically, the very social media which was central to the socalled Arab Spring that brought a sea of change in autocratic Arab states was also at the heart of Trump’s racist, sexist, xenophobic campaign. The same tool that was used for good, has made evil triumph in the US.
On the one hand, the dismantling of despotism, on the other the entrenchment of racist, sexist, xenophobic populism.
What, then, was wrong with ANC using social media to discredit its opposition?
In terms of hard-core real politik as we know, absolutely nothing wrong. Politics is about power and how you keep and control it. How you acquire it is usually immaterial. But the usage of imagery of an armed leader of the opposition, exhorting the electorate to vote for him “or else” does rankle.
It is morally bankrupt because of who we are as a nation. Our recent history is blood-spattered. It takes very little to ignite violence in SA.
The ANC has officially distanced itself from the campaign. Rightfully so. But it still begs the question: why did the ANC keep quiet for so long about this campaign which had been carried out in its name?
One is left with the impression that the ANC wouldn’t have pronounced itself at all on this matter had Bolani not sued the party.
Even though the high court has ruled that the application by Bolani was not urgent, it is inevitable that the truth will now come out as to what happened exactly. Richard Nixon, until he died, was still trying to exorcise himself of the ghosts of the Watergate scandal. To no avail. By all accounts, Eschel Rhoodie was an intelligent strategist and thinker, but mention of his involvement in the Info Scandal overshadows everything he has ever done. In future, stories about the ANC’s 2016 campaign will be garnished with tidbits about the “war room”. This is a sad milestone, to tower above many other embarrassing moments in our journey to full nationhood.
“The idea was to enhance the ANC’s profile on social media, at the expense of the DA and EFF