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07 September 2010
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A TRUTH THAT’S TOLD WITH BAD INTENT
Former DA leader Tony Leon will today be delivering the following speech to an audience at the University of Cape Town. It is, essentially, a response to President Mbeki’s (and the ANC’s) belief that the ruling party alone is able of identifying, defining and articulating “the truth”.
“A truth that’s told with bad intent”[1]
By Tony Leon MP
I had actually prepared this speech some 10 days ago, and while its central tenets hold true, there has been a significant development in the interim; namely, the decision by President Thabo Mbeki to relieve the Deputy Minister of Health, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, of her duties.
Among other things, the President’s letter of dismissal stated that, central to that decision, was the former Deputy Minister’s “inability to work as part of a collective.”[2]
I do not wish to offer a full and detailed analysis of that decision here, only to highlight it as significant, and to ask that you bear it mind as a backdrop against what I have to say today.
Introduction
I wish today to respond to President Thabo Mbeki’s recent newsletter in ANC Today, in which he addressed the situation at Frere Hospital, in the Eastern Cape.[3]
The argument I wish to present, which I will juxtapose with the President’s analysis, is that:
• The ANC consciously and deliberately has constructed and propagates a paradigm in which legitimate political analysis is the sole preserve of the ruling party;
• That this world view has, at its heart, a number of principles that are profoundly undemocratic and that,
• As a consequence of both these facts, the ruling party’s ability properly to engage in rational debate is limited and its response to criticism, often, self defeating.
Put more succinctly: the ANC believes its political programme is the only legitimate course around which South Africa’s future can be shaped. An analysis of that political programme, however, reveals a series of decisions that compromise our collective potential as a country. And, because the ANC holds it to be the only true course and above criticism, it cannot properly respond or change direction when that programme of action fails in any given respect; choosing rather to denigrate its opponents and obscure rational debate in favour of an emotional appeal to race and history.
More often than not, this attitude manifests itself in the form of a conflict over the nature and validity of a particular set of statistics; which is what happened in the case of Frere Hospital.
A given development or condition will be described in statistical terms - be it the number of babies that have died at a hospital, the percentage of people raped in a year or the ratio of Black to Coloured to Indian people at a public institution - and, generally speaking, two responses will be forthcoming: the ANC will present its very particular interpretation and other commentators - the media, civil society or an opposition party - will present their own and differing interpretation.
Depending on which view is presented first, the ANC will either set out its position authoritatively, with a pre-conceived outcome in mind, or with hostility and animus, as a weapon to silence dissent. Both, however, are designed to enforce and impose its interpretation as indisputable.
To a certain extent that is understandable and, indeed, in the nature of politics. But if your first principles are that only you are able to articulate the proper and ‘correct’ course of action, then statistics and how they are managed take on a new significance - for then you must be able to reconcile them with your decisions and conduct. Not to do so would be to risk the legitimacy of your political programme in its entirety.
In other words, whereas statistics are usually used to illustrate one’s ideological position, when the ANC is concerned, its ideological pos
| Posted on 22/8/2007
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