Mail & Guardian Online - February 2, 2007

Nothing could sway Mbeki. For four painful and death-filled years he stuck to his guns: Aids, he believed, was an imposed crisis which gave black men the reputation of animals who could not control their sexual craving.

Antiretrovirals, the drugs which have proven that Aids can be downgraded from a life-threatening to a chronic disease, were poisons. In 2003, facing an internal party rebellion, Mbeki recanted and retreated into a sullen silence on this most pressing of leadership challenges. We will never catch up the lost time.

In 2007, the signs are there again. This time it is crime, arguably one of the most acute crises facing his government. Crime is ripping into the heart of the country and not only into its white heart, as Mbeki and his lieutenants still seem to believe.

He is at it again: in his sonorous intellectual voice Mbeki has denied that crime is out of control. He is using and misusing statistics as he did at the height of Aids denial. Now, as then, he is not feeling the (weakening) pulse of his people. And, again, he is revealing his propensity to trust in conspiracy theories.

To wit, his letter to the nation on the party's website last week: "In the face of a sustained campaign by some to seek political gain from the problem of crime, the people of South Africa need to maintain a steady focus ...We cannot allow this important work to be diverted by the feverish denouncements that have preoccupied so many in the media in the [past] two weeks ..."

If the complaints about his attitude continue, Mbeki will start blaming whites in general and foreigners in particular.

He is the Nero in our midst. It is progress, but still cold comfort, that the numbers of murders have dropped from 25 965 in 1994 to 18 258 in 2005/06.

That's still 50 people every day, and even as the murder rate falls, the number of victims continute to grow. The thing about murder and death is that you cannot rationalise its horror and the ensuing fear. And you certainly cannot deny it. Mbeki may be right as a statistician, but he is dead wrong as a politician.

Crime caused the adjournment of parliamentary work this week as the chairperson of its public accounts committee, Themba Godi noted. Business Against Crime executive Alan McKenzie was shot and almost fatally injured; he could not make a presentation to Parliament. And again, South Africa was in the international headlines for crime as the murder of the celebrated historian, David Rattray, reverberated across the globe.

A politically weak Mbeki must not be allowed by the ruling party to turn his face away from crime. It reduces democracy and entrenches poverty. There is no shame in fighting crime; as there is no shame in doing our damndest to ensure the next generation is born HIV-free.

A fault at the towers

That John Perlman is leaving the SABC is sad, no doubt. The broadcaster should be a crucible of our finest journalistic talent. It is, after all, the most widely-used source of information in South Africa.

Most black rural South Africans rely on the SABC for their news and current affairs. But the challenge at hand is not about John Perlman, though he is now seen as symbol of an erosion of public broadcasting values at Auckland Park.

Perlman catalysed the commission of inquiry into blacklisting at the SABC when he contradicted, on air, the spokesman, Kaizer Kganyago, who was trying to deny newspaper reports of the censorship of the opinions of certain analysts. The commission confirmed Perlman's view: the SABC's managing director of news and current affairs, Snuki Zikalala, had indeed run an informal blacklist, which he then tried belatedly to turn into formal policy.

The fundaments of such practice and policy were ripped apart by commissioners Zwelakhe Sisulu and Gilbert Marcus, who suggested that Zikalala's management style needed urgent attention. They said that the broadcaster needed to democratically define policy on its use of analysts (because this goes to the heart of its mandate) and that there was a climate of fear that required the attention of the group CE, Dali Mpofu.

The report has quietly been shelved, possibly in File 13. Not a single meeting has been held to interrogate its findings; instead, Mpofu has turned on critics, claiming they are anti-black and anti-establishment. Perlman does not leave alone; his co-host, Nikiwe Bikitsha, has also quit, as have the former head of news, Jimi Matthews, and the chief operations officer, Solly Mokoetla.

More worrying is that further down in the studios, the broadcaster is losing talent (and notably black, female talent) to newcomers who pay better. This, too, is symbolic of skewed priorities at the SABC: it is top-heavy with managers, not journalists. The SABC can be a home of excellence in Africa; it is losing that potential and our public representatives on the board lack the commitment or vision to do anything about it.

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