Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - June 25, 2006
Brendan Boyle

JOEL Netshitenzhe, the silver-tongued policy wonk who has been the primary voice of the government for 12 years, plans to talk less and do more.

After a lifetime as a communicator, Netshitenzhe, 49, is giving up one of his two government jobs to focus his attention on policy.

As head of President Nelson Mandela's media unit from 1994 to 1998 and, since then, as chief executive of the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) he founded, it has been his job to explain many key policy developments to the media, the public and, often, internally to members of the African National Congress.

He has consistently defended President Thabo Mbeki's unpopular policies on Zimbabwe to the media. In 1996 Mandela delegated him to explain the still-contested growth, employment and redistribution policy (Gear) to a sceptical parliamentary caucus.

This month, to an unusually harmonious chorus of government and media acclaim for a job well done, Netshitenzhe bows out of the communication position to concentrate on his other job for the past five years - head of the Presidency's think-tank, the Policy Co-ordination and Advisory Service, known in government as the policy unit.

After five years of falling asleep over the day's unread newspapers at midnight, he hopes for a little more time to think about the choices that face the government as its primary focus shifts from policy formulation to implementation. And, perhaps, also a little more time with his family.

"I enjoy looking at issues from all kinds of angles and perspectives, weighing the trade-offs and choices and assisting the decision-makers to come to determinations on the basis of a variety of approaches," he said in an interview this week.

But the fluent flow of ideas and analysis stalled when Netshitenzhe tried to talk about himself - suddenly it was all stammer and tangled grammar. Squeezed half-sentences confirmed that he left the country in 1976 for military training in Angola and later studied political science in Moscow before being deployed to Lusaka as a Radio Freedom broadcaster and, later, editor of the ANC's most important publication, Mayibuye. To this day some of his colleagues and party comrades call him by his nom de guerre, Peter Mayibuye.

He reluctantly conceded that he is married and has three children, two girls and a boy aged 13, 11 and seven. But he keeps the window on that side of his life firmly closed. Few, even those who claim to know him well, have been to his home or can name his children.

Asked, in discussion about perceptions of crime, whether he worries about his own family, he offered a long yes: "I think that any South African needs to exercise vigilance and in your own home you would have all kinds of protective measures that you would introduce in order to make sure that your family is safe."

But he prefers to talk about crime as a government challenge. Business and social confidence indicators suggested the nation was on a high unequalled since the liberation euphoria of 1994, he said. When high-profile crimes dented that confidence, the government's job was to ensure that the nation did not lose sight of the actual situation, which was improving.

Netshitenzhe understates his influence on government and on party decisions. He sits on most of the ANC's key structures and in nearly all of the government's important panels and committees, from the President's International Investment Council to the Cabinet and the Forum of Directors-General. His policy unit deputy, Goolam Aboobaker, credits Netshitenzhe with a special ability to cut through the dross of policy debate.

"Joel is quickly able to see what the key issues are that we need to crack," he said.

One reason Netshitenzhe has been such a good communicator is that he was there when the position he has had to explain was formulated. Often he guided the decision, and that is what he hopes to do more of. Perhaps there will also be more of the writing and speaking that reveals his own passion for a new, just and caring society.

He warned in a University of Venda graduation address near his birthplace last year that South Africa's success could seed its own destruction if empowerment led only to rampant consumption.

"We stand at the pinnacle of political power, but draw pride merely at managing macroeconomic realities in a manner that seeks to perpetuate rather than to improve what we inherited," he said.

Earlier, at an anniversary service for his slain friend, Bryce Motsamai, he asked in a reference to internal ANC competition for office: "Would Bryce have been part of these councils of the movement if what it took was self-seeking publicity and self-promotion or even bags of money to buy members as voting fodder?

"You [Bryce] would have been concerned if æeveryone' in the NEC, PECs and legislatures sought to be a businessperson, a contractor or adviser reliant on his or her political position, or a shareholder adding no value to productive activity," he said.

Journalists who watched Netshitenzhe squirm through early briefings on Mbeki's position on HIV/Aids know he has had to defend policies he did not like.

Without admitting any difference of opinion, Netshitenzhe said this week: "You go into interactions with your own personal views on a matter, but once a collective decision has been taken, it becomes your own decision and you have to accept, defend and promote it.

"There is a sense in which you subject some of your own freedom to the views of the collective as a totality. That one accepts; that's how we have grown up as activists."

Though loyal to the collective, Netshitenzhe has been fierce and effective in the internal defence of his own views.

"I would say that I am an activist in government, encouraging debate, posing difficult questions, encouraging people to exercise their minds on issues," he said.

Netshitenzhe is widely credited as the architect of the government's turnaround on HIV/ Aids on April 17 2002, when he announced after a Cabinet meeting that the Department of Health would prepare to dispense the antiretroviral drugs and work with civil society groups in fighting HIV/Aids.

He encouraged Mbeki to retreat from the frontline of the Aids battle and he put the GCIS to work to promote the new treatment programme as one of the world's best - a contested claim that the government still repeats as often as possible.

Netshitenzhe has been equally central to policy debate within the ANC, to which he has given his full commitment since he ceased to be also a member of the SA Communist Party in 1990.

He is the acknowledged author of many important policy documents and the assumed source of others, including this week's internal paper on the future of the ANC and its alliance with Cosatu and the SA Communist Party.

According to ANC spokesman Smuts Ngonyama, Netshitenzhe is often given the job of collating and explaining new ideas.

"Joel is definitely one of the top dogs intellectually. He will complain, but I am not shy to say that," he said.

Ngonyama, Aboobaker and others who have worked with him stress Netshitenzhe's modesty, but equally his clear-minded argument. "He is flexible. He can be persuaded, but it is very hard. You must have the facts and put a persuasive argument on the table, not emotion," Ngonyama said.

More often, it is Netshitenzhe who does the persuading at crucial ANC meetings. His defence of positions perceived to be supportive of Mbeki in the battle to block Jacob Zuma's succession has cost him his non-aligned status in the movement.

"He is an institutional man who believes in co-ordinating government processes or who, if you want to be unkind, believes in moving processes towards the centre, which is Mbeki," said independent analyst Aubrey Matshiqi.

He said the growing perception that Netshitenzhe had aligned himself with Mbeki and with Mbeki's economic perspectives had probably cost him any chance of heading the party.

Though Netshitenzhe is regularly mentioned as a potential presidential candidate, he is adamant that he has no interest in the job.

"I have taken a firm decision," he said.

Aboobaker said that might not be a closed issue. "I am sure that if that's how the ANC felt about it - that he was the best candidate at a particular point - then I am sure he himself would sense it," he said.

But it is worth remembering that Netshitenzhe rarely takes a position not thoroughly considered and seldom loses an argument.

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