Beware poisonous hysteria around ANC battles

There were disturbing elements about the extraordinary attack in the Daily Maverick last week by ANC intellectual Joel Netshitenzhe on Ace Magashule and Jacob Zuma … ones which went largely unnoticed.

Netshitenzhe’s claimed that the RET (radical economic transformation) faction of the ANC are “SA’s own Savimbis and Dhlakamas” and that they are now “crawling out of the woodwork and showing their true colours.”

Savimbi and Dhlakama were supported by the SA military during the 1980s and early 1990s.

However, to correct his flawed understanding of history, Savimbi was not an illegitimate politician. In terms of international law, he was just the opposite, having been one of the three parties to the Alvor Agreement power-sharing arrangement in Angola in 1974/5 – an arrangement which was overthrown by the MPLA Marxist party, which took over the capital, Luanda, and unilaterally proclaimed itself the legitimate government.

There were actually no elections in Angola until 2003 – and the results of those were hotly disputed.

Dhlakama, on the other hand, would quality for the Marxist epithet of “bandit”.

His Renamo organisation was actually formed by the Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organisation in the 1970s and handed off to SA intelligence in 1980.

Renamo received covert support from Pretoria even after the Nkomati Accord in 1984.

Netshitenzhe’s words were, however, a deliberately misleading political slur on the RET faction. Despite his woolly suggestions of “conspiracy theories abound, with reports of units trained in sabotage and assassination”, there Monday 10 29 March 2021 is not a scrap of evidence to suggest Zuma, Magashule or anyone else in their clique is being backed by a foreign power to overthrow the government of South Africa.

The smear is very much in keeping with the Soviet and Cuban way of dealing with any form of dissent: first demonise your opponents. Accuse them of sedition, of being “enemies of the state” or even “bandits” (one of Fidel Castro’s favourite terms for those who opposed him).

That makes it much easier to reduce public sympathy for people or a movement and lessens the chances of anyone complaining once harsh action is taken “by the authorities”.

These sort of unsupported accusations – if this is even halfway true, why have Zuma and Ace not been arrested and charged with treason? – are highly dangerous, because they can start a process which leads to splits in a society which head down the road to civil war.

Doubt that?

Look at how Tutsis in Rwanda were demonised in 1994 by being labelled “cockroaches” by Hutu majority rabble-rousers…and how that incitement led to the murders of more than 250 000 people.

Most worrying is the failure of the media or any “analyst” to call out Netshitenzhe on his bullsh*t (there is no more appropriate term).

Some analysts even agree with him, not bothering to hide their pro-Ramaphosa sentiments.

Those who want to believe this tripe are willing to suspend their critical faculties because Ace and Zuma are the “bad guys”.

I hold no brief for either of them – and I hope their faction ends up in the dustbin of history – but this sort of hysteria is poisonous for our future.

Brendan Seery

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.