Something is amiss *Lazola Ndamase*
* * Strange events have taken place the past three weeks in the South African media. One such event relates to a paper published by The Times on my behalf in its print edition (Monday, April 4). When I read the paper published on my behalf by The Times, it was as though I had met myself for the first time. Not only is the paper a gross distortion of my views but The Times Editorial truly abused me. Words were inserted which changed the complexity of the paper and in some cases literally sentences. Apart from the fact that I felt abused, I felt insulted. A paper that was about keeping our eyes on the ball of free education was turned into something else it was not. The expectation is, when an opinion piece is being edited, at least the journalists concerned will remove but not add words. In this case literally an entire sentence was added to the paper. Some words were inserted in some sentences that totally threw off the whole meaning of the original sentence. If this is not violation, I do not know what else is. At least I would have expected that The Times would e-mail me the paper they wrote on my behalf in order for me to either approve or reject being their bogey man. They did not do that. As a result my original paper was long published in our online Journal (Moithuti). This paper was also submitted to ANC Today but later withdrawn for another paper I have written and submitted for publication. I do not think this distortion and perversion of my paper was by mistake. It is part of a broader campaign. What illustrates this is the fact that, on March 29, a day after we wrote a statement refuting allegations carried in the Sunday Independent that our organization is part of a conspiracy to remove Blade Nzimande as SACP General Secretary; The New Age ran a story still including our organization as part of this plot. The impunity with which this was carried out was as though The New Age was oblivious of our statement refuting this allegation. The so-called balanced view was not so balanced on this matter. It still carried the lie that there is a conspiracy that includes a whole range of social forces to remove SACP General Secretary. What`s most unfair about this is that it contributed to totally defocusing the public discourse from our principled call for free education into an arena that has nothing to do with our student movement: the election and non-election of SACP leaders. As though this is not enough, the Sunday Independent has been running what I call the "Blade Nzimande series" for three consecutive weeks now. Interestingly all these stories are written by one journalist (George Matlala). I do not usually buy the Sunday Independent; however, the "Blade Nzimande series" has made it a regular on my desk in case it carries one allegation or another against SASCO. Luckily this weekend we were not included. Something is clearly amiss here. I do not question the credibility of the stories by George Matlala if he has his sources, however, what type of stories can come packaged into a three-week series? Another question that we must ask is, why did George Matlala conspire to include SASCO in a conspiracy without even an iota of evidence that indeed we are part of this? For that matter, the story does not even quote an anonymous source from our organization. This was not by mistake. George Matlala wanted to communicate an idea of a left movement at war with itself. That is why it is not surprising that the organizations at the centre of these stories are SASCO, YCL, SACP, COSATU and its affiliates. These are left movements firmly committed to the struggle for socialism, and what better way to weaken their struggle against capitalism than to set them against each other, in a most bitter and violent witch-hunt. I am of the firm view that George Matlala is not just innocently reporting about stories he has found, but is using these stories for a broader agenda. This broader agenda has everything to do with attempting to influence the outcomes of the SACP National Congress and that of COSATU. George Matlala, like everyone else, has a right to seek a particular outcome in a COSATU or SACP conference, however, why use his position as a journalist for that? Why does he not just join the SACP and a COSATU affiliate in order to have a say in their conferences? This was the same problem we faced towards Polokwane, where some journalists elected to write bogus stories about what they termed "the silent majority" which they hoped would vote for Mbeki. When this did not work, they began touting "compromise candidates", this did not work either. But today, they have not learnt their lesson, they still repeat the same mistakes of yesteryear. As a result of the poverty levels and because of the lack of credibility of some of our media institutions, the majority of working class compatriots do not even bother themselves reading these newspapers, even if they read them, they just brush aside what they see. Any campaign that is run through newspapers will never achieve any results because it does not convince any SACP branch about this or that perspective, instead it mobilizes Party structures towards a particular view precisely because they view this as an attack. Instead of building an environment of frank engagement about the successes and failures of the Party, this builds an atmosphere of mistrust. This muddies the discourse. Let those who are not members of the Party leave us to deal with our issues without bombarding us with unnecessary stories that have nothing to do with resolving issues but everything to do with malice and innuendo. The correctness of Marx`s arguments in his critique of the German Ideology are correct and he said: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it." This is the same with the ideological prejudices carried by the bourgeois media in all the stories it carries. Rather than a Tribunal, what we lack is a working class oriented media that will contest the same space with the bourgeois media, and propagate working class ideas. That is where the battle for ideological hegemony lies. We have to double our efforts in this regard otherwise we will be crying tears all the way. The battle for ideological hegemony has to be carried even in the arena of media reporting. Other than that, as a student movement that mobilizes students mainly from working class backgrounds, we want the discourse to remain firmly on the matter of free education, decent work and on defeating capitalism than being mobilized to chase each other`s shadows. When the time comes, we will have to ensure in our capacity as SACP members that we articulate our views in the Party about what should be the strategic and tactical considerations that have been imposed by the post-Polokwane period. * * *Lazola Ndamase is Secretary General of SASCO and a Branch Member of the SACP* -- " Historical Materialism and dialectical Materialism are inseparable, they go together and survive along" -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. 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