Perplexing fall of the ANC’s rare man of principle
Pallo Jordan needs to come clean about his academic credentials, writes John Matisonn
He stood up for the SABC’s independence, which seems to be why he was dropped from the cabinet the first time
AS a friend, I was heartbroken to read the story of Pallo Jordan’s non-doctorate. As a journalist committed to press freedom, I had no doubt that, once it had the story, this newspaper had to publish it because it shows that one of our most respected leaders apparently misled South Africa as well as his friends.
From Sunday, the blogosphere went crazy. Intellectuals seemed to say they still held him in high regard. That led to a stream of blogs saying those commentators were hypocrites defending a friend but excoriating Hlaudi Motsoeneng for faking his matric to become chief operating officer of the SABC.
Jordan’s fall has hit many principled people particularly hard. He has never been accused of enriching himself. He was one of a small and declining number of struggle heroes whose public life retained the hallmarks of principle rather than greed. That also means his fall hurts the ANC, a party in which precious few still in office retain that image.
It struck me particularly hard for another reason. An important figure in a book I am writing is a South African who fled to exile in Britain in 1963, one year after Jordan did, and researched a PhD on the Broederbond and Christian Nationalism. He decided after several years’ work not to submit his thesis because he concluded the professor supervising his research was in cahoots with MI6.
The exile’s name was Charles Bloomberg. He had been a po- litical journalist on this newspaper, the Sunday Times, where he broke the original stories on the Broederbond before his hasty departure. After leaving university in Scotland, he lived the rest of his life in poverty, despite major contributions that included writing two key episodes of the acclaimed World At War TV series about World War 2. Part of his ground-breaking, unsubmitted thesis was published posthumously by Macmillan.
Jordan has not explained him- self since the story broke. This is what we know: as the son of a mother and father who both had doctorates, he was part of a small elite of intellectual Xhosa families.
When Dr AC Jordan was offered a post at the University of Madison in Wisconsin in the US, his son, Pallo, joined him and became a successful student, accumulating 97 credits towards his degree.
In the turbulent year 1965, Madison was a fairly radical university, and what derailed Pallo was his participation in the first wave of protests against the Vietnam War.
US immigration authorities stepped in and took his visa. American intelligence was active on left-wing US campuses, especially those where foreigners were enrolled and vulnerable. Some were approached to spy. Trying to stay illegally was not an option.
The only recourse for a principled African student was to get out of the country immediately, regardless of the academic cost, and try to start again in a different setting.
Here the trail runs cold. Jordan’s subject for what everyone thought was a completed doctorate was the Anglo-Boer War. He is extremely knowledgeable on this period and, particularly, the role of black South Africans in that colonial conflict. His favourite reading remains academic historical journals.
I first met him in Dakar, Senegal, in 1987, during the meeting between Afrikaner intellectuals and the ANC, when I asked him to participate in a filmed debate. Thabo Mbeki, Mac Maharaj and Jordan debated professors Frederik van Zyl Slabbert and Hermann Giliomee and future professor Theuns Eloff, later vice-chancellor of North-West University.
In those talks, he, Jordan, argued for nonracialism, a practice reflected consistently in his political and personal life.
All six debaters were strong, but Jordan’s historical knowledge was more than a match for the other five.
What makes him stand out as especially important in the ANC is his consistent stand, often at considerable personal risk, for both free speech and an honest look at uncomfortable truths.
That courage and independence got him into trouble, detained by the ANC for six weeks and tortured. Some communists were among those who got him released. To save the ANC embarrassment, he has refused to talk about the experience.
Among his many principled stands was his criticism of the South African Communist Party over its support for the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979. Once the ANC was legalised, that argument went public.
He challenged Joe Slovo in a lengthy debate criticising the character of the Soviet Union. The South African party, obligated to Moscow for arms and support, did not cover itself in glory on this matter, but Jordan did.
He worked for the ANC in research positions, headed research and strategy projects, lived in Luanda as head of Radio Freedom and then became head of the ANC’s department of information and publicity. He held that position when the ANC won the first election in 1994.
In the late 1980s, he once had to address the French chamber of deputies, not an easy audience, because the scheduled ANC speaker had not arrived. He kept them spellbound with his extempore hour-long disquisition comparing the French Revolution to ours. The deputies gave him a standing ovation.
I knew him again when I was a councillor on the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) (the precursor of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa) provided in chapter nine of the constitution.
He maintained the strictest respect for the independence of the IBA. He took an interest in our work but did not interfere, making him increasingly rare among cabinet members.
People who tried to get around the regulator by appealing to him as minister for political interference got a pro forma reply, referring them back to the IBA as the proper authority. If only all his successors had done likewise.
He stood up similarly for the SABC’s independence, which seems to be why he was dropped from the cabinet the first time.
Zimbabwean human rights were another unpopular cause he fought for in the corridors of ANC power. Those are some of the reasons his story matters to all of us.
He will be most concerned because the causes he espoused suffer with this report.
He needs to tell us the rest of the story. His knowledge is more than sound. He has contributed mightily to the quality of our democracy. If only he had told us sooner.
He never applied for a job requiring a PhD as qualification. It would not have prevented him doing any of the jobs he has done. Nobody would have cared.
Except, perhaps, the man himself.
Matisonn is the author of the forthcoming book, ‘God, Spies and Lies: How Journalists and Politicians Fought South Africa’s War of Ideas’, to be published by Missing Ink