Red Alert: Allister Sparks and Hendrik Verwoerd, Mondli Makhanya and Adolf Hitler, media-cum-opposition in the name of freedom but “freedom”

Freedom only for the opposition and the supporters of opposition in a democratic transition which was brutally opposed by the supremacist minority that oppressed the majority is no freedom at all. It is the basic condition for the suppression of democratic majority rule, it is one of the elements concerned with the ultimate overthrow of the very democratic transformation which lies at the heart of the transition.

Freedom must always be an equal right and freedom for all. Its effectiveness vanishes when it becomes an exclusive preserve for the like-minded who coalesce on opposition to a democratically elected majority government. From that moment on such a freedom becomes and anti-thesis of freedom, a farce, a condition for the repetition of the past history of the political dictatorship of the minority over the majority.

Rosa Luxemburg must be turning in her grave to see how I have inverted her thesis and turned it diametrically against its own face. Joe Slovo was right in ‘Has socialism failed?’ to point out that Luxemburg’s “words may not have been appropriate as policy (which is what Luxemburg argued for) in the special conditions of the phase immediately after the seizure of power [in Russia] in October 1917”. But the implication of the synthesis I developed as reflected above with the changes I necessarily made is that Slovo erred to suggest that “Luxemburg’s concept of freedom is surely incontrovertible once a society has achieved stability”.

In a class divided society such as South Africa where the economy remains under the dictatorship of the class minority, the capitalists – both domestic and foreign, stability is not possible because they continue to exploit the class majority, the workers. The diehard class minority has never changed. They are hostile to the democratically elected government in the same way as they were opposed to the liberation struggle notwithstanding their new methods of work and new partners in pursuit of their old opposition to the liberation movement.

As we have seen from other revolutions, instability in various forms can be imposed from outside. This is the situation in which Cuba has found itself for over half a century since its revolution in 1959. And there are many other examples involving externally driven regime changes, in the extreme through imperialist military campaigns. In a class divided society, and by this we are not referring just to a single country but society as a whole, real stability will only become possible when class exploitation and class distinctions have disappeared.

But then many institutions which are necessary under a class divided society will not be necessary in a classless society. Until then, class struggle will always take place. As Karl Marx and Frederick Engels state in the Communist Manifesto, class struggle, an outgrowth of a class divided society, is a constant and uninterrupted process, but at times it is hidden, while at other times it openly breaks out. This is what the ANC Strategy and Tactics document refers to when it recognises that the class struggle between capital and labour will at times become acute. It is mostly here where others refer to the process as instability. 

Therefore Luxemburg’s thesis is unworthy of any credibility in the field of revolutionary theory. It is actually a deviation from the Marxist theory of the state as developed by Marx and Engels. This theory was enriched by Vladimir Lenin mainly in the State and Revolution and through the practical experiences of the Great October Socialist Revolution which took place in Russia in 1917, thus, thenceforth Marxist-Leninist theory of the state. Luxemburg’s deviation actually occurred in a polemic with Lenin on this and other issues concerning the state, party organisation and discipline.

Having laid down our theoretical intervention, let us now turn our focus in this thesis on the realities from which we have drawn our data for the conclusions we have reached.

Hypocrisy and sections of the media acting as the conduits of opposition

In January there was a big hullabaloo when Independent Group Executive Editor Karima Brown and Opinion and Analysis Group Editor Vukani Mde sported ANC T-shirts at its 103rd anniversary in Cape Town. There was a huge media uproar fermented against Brown and Mde but the Independent Group. This was driven through electronic media outlets and print publications controlled by competing media interests such as Naspers, the Politicsweb, the Mail & Guardian and so on.

In the last general election the Mail & Guardian called for voters not to vote for the ANC. The newspaper’s stance on Brown and Mde was therefore not unexpected, as the paper continues to advance its opposition to the ANC. Every week the Mail & Guardian carries one or more headline or story which leaves the reader with an impression that the ANC is either mess or is messing up and must be removed from its leading position in government.

But then the public broadcaster, the SABC weighed in the fiasco through SAfm. “Independent” analysts and Editors from some of the above-mentioned media groups, including the Mail & Guardian, were assembled by the Forum@8 presented by Sakina Kamwendo. Surely those who set up the programme clearly understood where the Mail & Guardian stand. They were not disappointed. Brown and Mde were bashed to an extent that Brown had to call in to defend herself but not before she apologised that she underwent surgery, which inhibited her speech.

And the political party opposition, the DA acted by referring a complaint against Brown and Mde to the Press Ombudsman, who dismissed the “case”. The Press Ombudsman ruled that the institution could not judge Brown and Mde as the “behaviour” complained about was not followed by publication.

Hang on here?

This whole counter-movement against freedom of expression has been exposed for what it is. Rather than dealing with matters of principle, what we saw is a politics of opposition to the ANC and market competition in the media turning nasty.

Back in January 2014 when the DA announced its parliamentary lists, there were names left off from the public announcement by this “transparent” party. We were told that those names were “confidential candidates”. But the truth cannot be hidden permanently.

Unlike in the ANC where candidates are, in the main, democratically nominated and elected, the DA’s electoral lists are assembled from, at least, applications from what the then party leader Helen Zille said were “aspirant candidates”. It later turned out that practicing journalists, among them Brendon Boyle, now former Editor of the Daily Dispatch and Helga Van Staden, now former Municipal Reporter of Die Burger and former Crimes Reporter of the Herald, were part of the DA’s parliamentary lists. 

During the hullabaloo on Brown and Mde, we were told that those DA-aligned journalists-cum-public representatives were objective in their work, because they were never seen wearing DA regalia. What a nonsense!

Again, it was as if those who criticised Brown and Mde for transparently exercising their freedom of expression without compromising their work were objective. This despite some of those critiques not only working for, but also supporting, media groups which adopted an opposition stance against the ANC, in particular, against revolutionary politics in general. As we have seen in the case of the Mail & Guardian, in a number of cases that stance has since moved from opposition to an anti-ANC stance “Anyone but the ANC” as campaigned for in one of the newspaper’s editorials in the eve of the general election held on 7 May 2014. 

In fact many media groups which present themselves as fair and balanced are actually ideological mouthpieces of reactionary political ideologies such as conservatism and liberalism. Sadly, in South Africa such ideologies are historically interwoven with racism. Accordingly, opposition under the pretext of the so-called free market, to state intervention in the economy in the interests of the historically oppressed and the previously disadvantaged who remain continuously disadvantaged is actually against the democratically elected government viewed racially as the “black majority government”.

But let us be clearer. Not all the opposition, despite its various strands, is an outgrowth of domestic “original” conditions and competing interpretations on the solutions to the problems we face. Some sections of it are foreign controlled and funded. Therefore there is an opposition activity, both in the media and party political activities, which is part and parcel of Adam Smith’s “hidden hand” in its political activism – NOT his myth about such an inconceivable hand co-ordinating economic activity. 

On we go.

Following the general election held on 7 May 2014, I led the ANCYL delegation to the offices of the Mail & Guardian after the league marched against the newspaper’s anti-ANC editorial stance. The Editor Angela Quintal and Deputy Editor Moshoeshoe Monare led the Mail & Guardian delegation. They argued that the newspaper was exercising its right to freedom of expression when it called for voters not to vote for the ANC. After discussing a number of issues the only agreement we reached with the Mail & Guardian at the meeting was to disagree. By the way, it is worth underlining that Monare was later to be one of the guests invited during that SAfm’s the Forum@8 programme mentioned above, where he criticised Brown and Mde.

According to the logic, pursued to its inner essence, freedom of expression is not a right but a privilege to be exercised by those who express opposition to the ANC or its Alliance partners. An extreme version of this logic was expressed on 10 May 2015 by Mondli Makhanya, the Editor at Large of the City Press, Naspers owned Media24 title. Naspers, a private media monopoly served as the mouthpiece of Afrikaner nationalism since 1915 and throughout the apartheid era, serving the Afrikaner broederbond very well.

Scrutinised thoroughly, Makhaya suggests that freedom of expression is only freedom of expression if it is not exercised by the ANC or its Alliance partners or supporters but by those opposed to, or even insulting the ANC or its leaders (as we have seen in the case of Brett Murray’s “Spear painting”). Unsurprisingly, Makhanya’s intervention entitled “Is speech in SA free?” says absolutely NOTHING about the first newspaper banning in government in a democratic South Africa. 

Is it because the ban was imposed by the DA, a party opposed to the ANC?

The same political attitude was advanced by a guest on a radio programme who was asked why South Africa’s ranking on free press was recently revised downward (This is a subjective political decision by the way). He profiled all manner of accusations against the ANC. He never discussed the implications and the impact of the post-apartheid ban on a newspaper in government.

In its banning order, the Helen Zille DA-led provincial government prohibited all Western Cape departments from subscribing to the Cape Times. But the “unbiased” Makhanya, who claims to be concerned about media censoring, also failed in his piece to appreciate that action constitutes a concrete form of expression, and that it is not precluded from the right of freedom of expression. As Marx said in ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it”. Of course Mkhanya’s logic thought and thus argument got it wrong in the extreme. By the way protest action is protected in our country’s constitution under political rights and the ANC and its Alliance partners reserve their right to exercise it. 

What we have seen in the media is that many of the self-proclaimed champions of freedom of expression are given monopoly space in the media as columnists, “analysts”, editor at large, etc. They say all manner of things about other organisations, institutions, government and people, who they criticise negatively without simultaneously being given an equal opportunity to exercise their right of reply. The ANC and its alliance partners have been on the receiving end of this operation both under apartheid and now post-1994.

It is in this context that the only views profiled as the so-called independent views are those in opposition or anti-ANC and its Alliance partners. This has even found its way in the academia, which is a disaster to education!

If a need has arisen to review the press code, we above point to one of the areas that must not be left out to give effect to the equal right of those who feel negatively affected by comments made about them in the media to respond with equal space granted to them.

By the way the opposition and the anti-ANC, anti-communist and anti-Alliance media content that now seeks to monopolise freedom of expression is not new. In many instances it is a continuation of the same old stance adopted under colonial oppression and apartheid by those media houses which were opposed to our struggle for liberation and social emancipation. That a similar politics is now advanced through the employment of black employees does not alter its essential character and the fundamental forces it benefits materially, politically and otherwise. 

What about some of the latest developments?

A plot to orchestrate the downfall of Eastern Cape Premier Phumulo Masualle through embedded journalism allegedly leaked from one of the media houses where it was hatched. This is where some of the DA public representatives used to work as journalists. Who knows how many future DA “confidential candidates” remained behind, or continue their operations throughout the media? The question, however, goes high up.

An undisputed newspaper report last year stated that the DA was the only party that called the owner seeking to influence editorial content and coverage in that title’s media group. The move was reportedly rejected, and the DA was referred to proper procedures.

But then who knows how many owners accepted or willingly push the line that was rejected from the DA?

In its statement dealing with the alleged plot to manufacture the downfall of Masualle, the SACP in the Eastern Cape on 18 May 2015 expressed concern that the Daily Dispatch “has for a long time behaved as a newsletter of the opposition, in particular the DA as the leader of the anti-majoritarian offensive and the shop steward of those in control of the economy of our country, who remain dominantly white”.

Allister Sparks and Hendrik Verwoerd?

Sparks, the former Editor of the Rand Daily Mail recently addressed a DA conference in Port Elizabeth. Much of the criticism dealt with his appalling utterances saying apartheid dictator, Hendrik Verwoerd was a “smart politician”. He listed WHITE ONLY names of people who he said were smart politicians. Outgoing DA leader Helen Zille unsurprisingly backed Sparks.

But what was a journalist who is forced upon the readers as an independent analyst and columnist doing at a podium of a political party conference in session when he glorified a man who presided over a crime against humanity, apartheid as a smart politician?

Unprincipled media voices did not border to look at this question. Of course Sparks’s utterances were not made at an ANC National Conference but that of the opposition.

Beware of hypocritical voices in the media and politically motivated complaints to the Press Ombudsman coalescing on opposition to our country’s liberation movement and masked in the name of media independence!

Beware of a counter-revolution in the making in all its manifestations!

AlexMashilo is SACP Spokesperson, and writes in his capacity as a Professional Revolutionary.

This article first appeared in the SACP’s online journal, Umsebenzi Online.