You know how it is. You emerge from the lab, having metaphorically flung all that you possess at the TB growing in there and you need a coffee. And while the kettle is boiling, you glance at Monday’s newspaper, dozing casually on the tea room table and you catch sight of Blade Nzimande’s outburst which was “not directed at anyone in particular”, but actually was.
Blade talks mainly sense, but I had to sit down with an oat crunchie and work my way through these two lines in the middle of his emotional monologue:
We are dealing with an anti-worker, anti-left, pseudo-militant demagogy that betrays all our long-held ANC-alliance traditions of internal organisational democracy, mutual respect for comrades, non-racialism and service to our people.
It has created space for the anti-majoritarian, conservative reactive groundswell that seeks to tarnish the whole movement, portraying us all as anti-constitutionalist and as narrow nationalist chauvinists.
So many ists. That can’t be good.
Blade’s concern is seemingly for the ANC-alliance, but the divisions he speaks of here are being created across the country “not by anyone in particular”. I almost feel sorry for Blade and his chums. He’s correct that the entire Alliance is being tarred with the same brush, through no fault of his own.
At what point those “in charge” of the ANC finally find the guts (or indeed the ability) to prevent “anyone in particular” from causing more hurt and harm, I don’t know.
But like not learning someone’s name at a party, the longer the conversation goes on, the more difficult it becomes to ask.