Don’t shout down dissident voices

The ANC has become used to the fact that everybody within its ranks sings the same, harmonious choruses. So, when members give voice to a different tune, its leadership erupts in righteous anger.

Yesterday, it was Trevor Manuel and Tito Mboweni who were in the firing line, for daring to express thoughts which are at odds with the approved “collective” opinion of the ANC.

Manuel, the former finance minister who is now chair of Old Mutual, said last week the ANC’s time in office since 1994 was “almost three decades that were wasted”. And Mboweni, the current holder of the national purse, had the temerity to criticise Zambia for sacking its Reserve Bank governor.

Manuel was lambasted by ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe, who warned him not to become involved in the “ongoing onslaught against our movement being desperately choreographed on various social media platforms.”

Perish the thought that the people of South Africa could be starting to get tired of the ANC’s looting and incompetence of their own volition, rather than having these ungrateful and treasonous thoughts being put into their heads … Mabe said: “There is absolutely no basis to portray a doom-laden picture of the country to the media and to the outside world,” adding the by now cliched response to criticism that “many economic problems continue to be based on the structures of inequality and underdevelopment inherited from South Africa’s colonial and apartheid past”.

The metaphorical whipping handed out to Manuel, though, was expected … but not nearly as worrying as the tongue lashing of Mboweni by President Cyril Ramaphosa, who said the finance minister’s “unfortunate remarks” do not reflect the views of the South African government and its people.

Mboweni is worried about interference with the impartiality of the central bank and he clearly has reason to be. Another wasted decade loading?

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