Publish And Be Damned

The ANC National Working Committee has produced an 11-page response to the SACP’s discussion document on "State Power". This response has been given to the media but is not yet on the ANC web site. The CU has a hard copy only. The impression it gives is that the writers think that the SACP discussion is not about South Africa but about them, the ANC. On the first page the NWC document refers to the ANC as the “ruling party”, in contradiction of the ANC National General Council which last July reaffirmed that the ANC is a liberation movement, and not a party. The ANC NWC has nothing to say about the question of SACP candidates in elections. They must know that this is the main reason for the SACP Commission (for which our discussion document is only a guide). The tone of the NWC reply is impatient and condescending. It tells off the SACP for “subjectivism” and ignores the question of freedom. Without the “subject” there is no freedom. When their document surfaces in electronic form, it will go up on the CU site and be distributed by e-mail. In last Saturday’s (Business Day) Weekender Hopewell Radebe opened a piece on Dali Mpofu’s difficulties at the SABC as follows: ‘When the courtesan Harriette Wilson threatened to publish her memoirs and the contents of secret letters she had received from the Duke of Wellington, he is said to have replied: “Publish and be damned!”’ Now comes a letter from Ronald Suresh Roberts, which the Business Day has published for this literary courtesan in the same bold Wellingtonian spirit. And indeed, spiteful though Roberts is, his incontinent viciousness is not going to forestall his own damnation in this case. By accusing Vukani Mde of being “embedded” (because Mde once worked for COSATU) Roberts has managed to insult the major part of South Africa’s press corps, namely all those who have come through the ranks of the movement, and gone on to the mainstream media or to government. What on earth got into him? Of all examples of embeddedness, his own was among the most flagrant (when he was running Kader Asmal’s amen corner). The accuser accuses himself. All his bluster and reckless hazard of his own reputation was quite wasted, of course. The lack of good coomunication between COSATU and the government cannot be denied. It is a truth generally acknowledged. Even the ANC (in the current discussion paper on leadership) shows this awareness by proposing four permanent seats for COSATU on its National Executive Committee. Far from damaging Mde’s career prospects, Roberts has only added to his own professional notoriety. If he continues to make a virtue of unpleasantness he may find himself not published any more but only damned as a simple bore, and rightly so. See his letter, linked below. Zalmay Khalilzad is the US ambassador, or viceroy, in Iraq. A message from himself to Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, recounts what is going on among the three Iraqi women and six Iraqi men who work in the “Public Affairs Office” of the huge US embassy (as big as Vatican City) in the closed-off “Green Zone” in Baghdad. This ambassador seems to be in the position of so many whites under the old regime, who had no contact with reality other than through their domestic employees. Helena Cobban on her distinguished blog “Just World News” sets out the background and the significance of this communication, which appears to be genuine. See link below. e-Naledi is an e-mail magazine from the National Labour and Economic Development Institute. See the linked version below. It includes reference to a book called Labour Pains: Women’s Leadership and Gender Struggles in COSATU, by Liesl Orr, available from NALEDI. To subscribe to e-Naledi, contact lebogang@naledi.org.za . Click on these links: Impartial truth, Ronald Suresh Roberts, Letters, Business Day (393 words) Khalilzad reports things falling apart, Helena Cobban, Just World News (1321 words) E Naledi 15 June 2006 (423 words)