 Lamont upsets media view of political battle Judge Colin Lamont's controversial ruling on a liberation movement freedom song has upset the cosy but problematic assumption that informs much of the mainstream media's narrative about contemporary politics. What is that paradigm? It is, essentially, that the key battle in South Africa at present is a struggle that pits the ANC-alliance camp - bent on undermining the rule of law and the Constitution - against the media, opposition parties, civil society, and, above all, the judiciary - stout defenders of supposedly threatened values of constitutionality and civility. Now Judge Lamont has set the cat among the pigeons. Editorials in a range of newspapers, the DA, law scholar Pierre de Vos, cartoonist Zapiro and many others who have been in the forefront of criticising the ANC-alliance have questioned the wisdom of the ruling. This is the confusing context (confusing only for the prevailing media paradigm) in which Charl du Plessis reports, on yesterday's front page, on bombastic statements about Lamont's ruling by ANC Youth League president Julius Malema. The paradigm prescribes that what Malema says must simply be an extreme version of what everyone else in the ANC-alliance really thinks. And so, true to form, having reported on Malema's statements, Du Plessis proceeds: "But Malema is not the only ANC leader who has recently lashed out at the judiciary over litigation and court judgments." (Clearly, Du Plessis is not going to acknowledge that a much wider range of forces have also criticised Judge Lamont.) Listed in the "Malema camp" is SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande who "said last month that the Constitution was being 'dumbed down into a narrow check-and-balance watchdog' and a defender of 'existing powers and privileges'". Nzimande is quoted somewhat accurately, but the quotation is completely decontextualised. Nzimande, reading from a SACP central committee statement, was defending the Constitution and the rule of law. He was arguing that a minority faction of ill-disciplined and demagogic personalities within the broad ANC movement was costing us dearly. Racist and sexist demagoguery, the abuse of our struggle legacy as a smoke screen to divert attention from personal accumulation and ill-discipline - all of these things play directly into the hands of the most conservative forces in our society. We end up with Afriforum posing as the true defenders of our immensely progressive Bill of Rights. We are on dangerous terrain if we allow the political debate to be polarised and racialised around, on one hand, demagogues who ride roughshod over anything that stands in the way of personal accumulation and, on the other, ethnic conservatives who try to dumb down the Constitution into little more than a narrow protector of their historical privileges. The challenges facing our society lie elsewhere: crisis levels of unemployment, grinding poverty and racial inequality. Addressing these requires a different paradigm, a shared South African narrative. From: http://www.timeslive.co.za/ilive/2011/09/16/lamont-upsets-media-view-of-political-battle-ilive You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . |
