Musa Xulu, the ANC head of Media & Communications in the greater Johannesburg region, has made an ad hominem attack on me, posted on the Friends of Jacob Zuma website (31 March., see here).
In this article, headed "What is the motivation behind lies peddled against Jacob Zuma?," Mr Xulu refers to me as an "agent provocateur" when he writes of "agent provocateurs, the likes of Mr Trewhela." (My emphasis).
In a further passage, in which he refers to writings by me concerning Jacob Zuma as the future President of South Africa, he states the following: "The apartheid government cannot bring themselves to accept that a self taught individual without any formal education was able to countenance all their attempts to infiltrate the movement considering that they had hired professors to develop strategies. It is my suspicion that for this reason they (through Paul Trewhela) doubt the information to the effect that Zuma didn't go to a formal school..." . Mr Xulu further asks, "who is feeding him with this clearly false information...[?]". (My emphasis).
Put simply, Mr Xulu accuses me of being "hired" by the apartheid government as an "agent provocateur" to spread "false information" about Mr Zuma.
He further seeks to re-write history by airbrushing out my status as a political exile from South Africa since 1967, when I was released from Pretoria Local Prison and left the country under an exit permit, by stating "I was not in exile and so wasn't Paul," since, as he argues, Paul's "having been in Britain or 3 year stint in prison or editorial prowess of Freedom Fighter hardly qualifies him as an exile but instead it is luxury." (My emphasis again).
The methodology of this kind of Media & Communications is as follows:
Step 1. Do not discuss any of the ideas or facts cited by the other person.
Step 2. Instead, attack and abuse the character of the person with whom you disagree.
Step 3. Accuse this person of being an "enemy agent"/"agent provocateur"/"spy" (or what-have-you) who has been "hired" or "mandated" to "spread false information", etc etc.
Step 4. Further steps then might or might not follow. (In Russia, the great model state and patron of the ANC in exile, this kind of language turned individuals such as Trotsky or Bukharin into Hitler's agents, and then... well, what followed, followed).
Mr Xulu sent an earlier draft of this article to me and others by email on 30 March, headed "Letter: What really motivates Paul Trewhela to peddle lies against Zuma", posted on Politicsweb the following day, here.
This email letter can be supplied by Politicsweb, if requested. It appears in a slightly sanitised and cleaned-up version in Mr Xulu's article on the Friends of Jacob Zuma website.
There is something important to note here.
In his original email, Mr Xulu defends the use of torture by the ANC'S Department of Intelligence and Security (iMbokodo), in which Jacob Zuma was head of intelligence, in order to extract information. This is despite the fact that the practice of torture carried out by the iMbokodo in its camps in exile was later thoroughly condemned in reports issued by two commissions of inquiry appointed by the ANC itself - the Skweyiya Commission (1992) and the Motsuenyane Commission (1993) - and by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In his email letter, Mr Xulu writes as follows: "For my part I have never been known to have any affinity or sympathy for those who spied against the ANC nor those who were suspected to have been spies for that matter hence I won't entertain any suggestion that torturing them to get information is wrong. How else was the ANC intelligence dept going to get information out of them because the suspects would not have voluntarily given them this information?" (Again, my emphasis - PT).
We have here the mindset of the ANC in exile and within the country, which led to numerous deaths during the apartheid period. Many people were subjected to brutal and degrading behaviour by iMbokodo merely because they expressed a disagreement with some bully in the Security Department about this or that. The whole matter is extensively documented. A first-hand account by five of iMbokodo's victims in the ANC's camps in Angola is available here.
This is clear evidence that the ANC is in danger of returning, as the government of South Africa, to the methodology of Quatro prison camp, and of the necklace: to the methodology of murder and torture of critics and opponents, under the old cry of "enemy agents", or "imidlwembe!" (stray dogs). It is an extraordinary admission to come from a senior ANC official in the dominant party of government in an election campaign. It suggests strongly that the ANC might - if it were to follow in the path set out by Mr Xulu - take South Africa down the path of Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe.
We shall see if the ANC National Working Committee will repudiate this brutal, thuggish language coming from the ANC's head of Media & Communications in the most populous region of the nation, with its mindset from the reign of Stalin in the Soviet Union.
Does the ANC stand by these words? Or does it not?
A lot of lives will depend on the answer.
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