20 May 2014 | Tony Leon | Original Publication: BDlive
THE Saturday morning after the 2004 election results were posted, I was
rather tired and was enjoying an unaccustomed lie-in.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) had — in the teeth of the fiercest
opposition infighting, the newly arrived Independent Democrats on its left, the
vengeful New National Party on its right, and the huge African National
Congress everywhere else — posted a creditable result and increased its support
from five years earlier.
Any relief I felt evaporated when I reached the op-ed page of the
Weekend Argus. It was dominated by an article under a large headline saying
"Tony Leon must go". I seethed with indignation at its unfairness,
especially when the article quoted several unnamed "party sources and
insiders" who had fed this particular narrative, suggesting the party had
reached the end of its road under my leadership. I was tempted to dash off an
immediate response.
Before I reacted in fury, I sought the counsel of two people I could
rely on for unvarnished advice, chief whip Douglas Gibson and strategist Ryan
Coetzee. Both provided a context to the article and stayed my hand. Gibson, not
for the first time, counselled: "Don’t feed a fire started by others, it
will only spread; better, starve it of oxygen."
Coetzee pointed out that the two journalists, pens dipped in a
combination of bile and vitriol, were "deeply embedded in the African
National Congress (ANC)". I took their advice and someone lower down the
party food chain was deputed to pen a replying, but subdued, letter and set out
the objective facts, as we perceived them.
Just how embedded those journalists were would be revealed in the
"cash for articles" scandal that engulfed the Independent Newspapers
group, and the authors of this hatchet job were revealed to be in the pay of
the ANC premier of the Western Cape, Ebrahim Rasool, and were forced to leave
their posts before I left mine about three years later.
Last weekend, instead of savouring their sweeping victory at the polls,
the ANC’s elections head, Malusi Gigaba, vengefully turned on the media:
"You campaigned hard against the ANC and we beat you. We defeated
you," he harrumphed. On Saturday, at the Franschhoek Literary Festival,
veteran journalist Max du Preez pointed out that, during the election, the ANC
had the fawning and opposition-censoring South African Broadcasting Corporation
in its corner, plus the support of a Gupta-owned newspaper (The New Age) and TV
channel (ANN7), and a self-acknowledged ANC supporter in charge of all
Independent Newspapers titles. In reality, the ANC had "beaten just three
or four newspapers: Business Day, Sunday Times, City Press and the Mail &
Guardian". "They totally ignore the Afrikaans press," he added.
These past two Sunday mornings have been excruciating for DA leader
Helen Zille. After just 72 hours of positive reporting on her and the party
after their impressive election result, parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko
dropped a bomb by announcing in the Sunday Times that she was departing from
her post and these shores to continue her education. Barely a day later, former
DA insider Gareth van Onselen penned an acidic column on the "real
reasons" for Mazibuko’s departure and fingered Zille for it.
Just as that report and the furious pushback by the DA against Van
Onselen subsided, another even more thermonuclear device was detonated in last
Sunday’s newspaper. The Sunday Times led with the headline: "Mazibuko
nothing without me — Zille". The report culled various leaks from the
small (fewer than 30 members) party federal executive meeting, which suggested
that Zille had launched a root-and-branch attack at the meeting on her former
protégé, Mazibuko.
Within hours, Zille had published a special edition of her newsletter
under the headline, "The abuse of media to drive internal agendas in the
DA." She provided a blow-by-blow version of her recollection of the
meeting, which she said had been distorted by the Sunday Times to advance
"the succession agendas" of certain unnamed party leaders. Let me add
that the reporter concerned, Jan-Jan Joubert, does not practise "cash for
articles" or any other unethical versions of journalism.
None of this is pretty, and none of it advances the party cause or the
interests of its voters who so recently placed 4-million votes behind it. Nor
does it do anything to help the cause of the new parliamentary leader, who will
take over in what are now the most difficult of circumstances.
I am not sure that seeking meetings with newspaper editors to change the
narrative or expose the agendas, or whatever, will really do much to staunch
the leaks, an age-old phenomenon which Zille herself, as a political journalist
in the 1970s and 1980s, benefited from in her own reportage.
Rather, heed the advice of Tony Blair to his fractious, but electorally
successful, Labour Party: "When you look inside you lose, when you look
outside you win."
• Leon is the author of Opposite
Mandela (Jonathan Ball) Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA
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