Blade must switch roles
SOUTH Africa’s political landscape seems capable of sprouting silly political statements faster than lantana bush.
Most are amusing and harmless, but occasionally, like the noxious weed, rash and irresponsible comments can take root, spread and do considerable damage.
High on the list of such asinine rhetoric must surely be the comments by Minister of Higher Education and Training and SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande on the farm turmoil in the Western Cape.
Nzimande blustered that the Western Cape premier and DA leader Helen Zille should not act like a “cry baby” about the violence tearing apart communities in the Boland.
“I have a message for Helen Zille. Do not be like a cry baby asking national government to intervene,” he told several thousand ANC members gathered at Kings Park stadium in Durban for the ANC’s 101st anniversary celebrations at the weekend.
He then ordered Zille to “go tell farm bosses” to negotiate with farm workers.
One could be tempted to descend to the same level and ask what the ANC’s North West premier Thandi Modise had been doing during the violent mine strike that resulted in the Marikana tragedy, or when and how she went to tell mine bosses to negotiate.
Clearly Nzimande was attempting to smear Zille in a vain attempt for popular acclaim at a major public rally.
What Nzimande needs to understand is that he is no longer simply a rabble-rouser whose task is to whip up emotional fervour against party opponents. That role changed when, for a reason best known to those who made the decision, he was appointed to the country’s cabinet.
With such an appointment comes considerably more responsibility than that of a party stormtrooper.
Zille’s appeal for national intervention is hardly the action of a “cry baby”. The economic damage of such violent labour action, irrespective of any justification that may lie behind it, is not just provincial in scale. It is national, and a national response is certainly required.
Even Nzimande’s party has pleaded for peace and warned that the protesters themselves risked losing popular support if they continued their rampage of destruction and looting.
The cause of the workers and their leadership being marooned on the rocks of hooliganism, vandalism and robbery is something that should concern Nzimande more than anything Zille may or may not do.
We need far more leadership nationally to avoid another labour tragedy, and not silly comments.