Gwede Mantashe’s press interview on Tuesday must qualify as the farce of the century, says Congress of the People’s spokesperson Dennis Bloem in a statement to the media.
He said Cope is bemused. “Gwede Mantashe lectured the media on sticking to the facts in his press interview yesterday. The demand he wing on them, as usual, did not apply to him regarding his allegation of western agencies working to achieve a regime change in South Africa. He can speculate and take liberties with the fact, but not the journalists who have beavered away to show South Africa as it is, warts and all.
“For Gwede Mantashe, Hlaudi Motsoeneng should serve as the exemplar that they should all follow. Sunshine journalism should prevail even if this was at the expense of the facts”, Bloem said.
“As for Mr Zuma having breached his oath of office and found to have done so by the Constitutional Court, the ANC branches according to Mantashe had forgiven him and that was the end of the matter. Easy peasy. Mr Zuma should therefore continue in office and break his oath of office yet again if he wanted to. Citizens must abide by the law and be subject to the law. The ANC simply brushes that off and continues merrily on its way. For the ANC Mr Zuma should continue in office and lean on the public purse for millions more to fight his personal legal woes that have nothing to do with the state. His personal matters are being fought with scarce state resources. Mr Zuma should remain in office, according to the ANC, and have Ministers who make a thorough mess of interviews or leave an interview midway because of interviewers pressing too hard. What does it matter that the world should be shocked by all of these developments?
Bloem said “as for state capture, only one submission had been made. Clearly, so far as the ANC was concerned, this showed that there was not much factual evidence about Mr Zuma having allowed the state to be captured. As Mr Zuma pointed out, this was only a little matter. Furthermore, the fact that Pravin Gordhan cannot shake off rumours of arrest because of feeble protestations by Mr Zuma, means that he is being kept in place with the sword of Damocles hanging perilously over his head. He must save South Africa from a ratings agency’s downgrade but he must not seek to interfere with the nuclear programme nor the holiest of holy cows: the SAA.
“As for Hlaudi Motsoeneng staying in office in defiance of a court order, why deal with that fact. The regnant elite of South Africa must not be pressured by court orders.
“Furthermore, Joemat Peterson’s selling off the larger part of our strategic oil reserve in some kind of a secret deal at a knock down price, will require to produce facts which are not available to them but accessible for the ANC anyway. So it all boils down to being a game within a self serving game.
“What we have been witnessing when Gwede Mantashe holds a press conference is farce on a grand scale. May be, like his boss, he dislikes intelligent people poking around and unmasking what the ANC is doing. His last attempt yesterday must qualify as the farce of the century. We know farce when we see it and in his case it is so much farce in your face that you cannot avoid it”, Bloem said.
