Impartial+truth,+Ronald+Suresh+Roberts,+Letters,+Business+Day

Business Day, Johannesburg, Letters, 19 June 2006
=Impartial truth=

In your editorial, Hurt behind the rage (June 5), you have it as “fact” that President Thabo Mbeki has never once met Congress of South African Trade Union (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.

This you present as evidence of Mbeki’s “wilful neglect” of all and sundry, including allies. Vavi is one of these supposed victims of neglect.

But the facts are different and you know them to be different because your own political correspondent, Vukani Mde, was a direct participant in these facts.

I quote verbatim what City Press reported on November 22 2002: “Cosatu has dismissed as dishonest, claims by Mbeki and his cabinet that its leadership had snubbed the government by failing to attend a meeting called to discuss a looming national strike next month.

“Mbeki’s spokesperson Bheki Khumalo said on Friday the president was concerned by the no-show of the Cosatu leadership at the presidential labour council meeting on Friday.

“Cosatu said Mbeki’s claim that the union leadership had snubbed the meetings was an example of ‘very unfortunate dishonesty’.

“Cosatu spokesperson Vukani Mde said Mbeki’s office knew the federation’s leadership was not going to attend the meeting due to prior engagements.

“He told City Press Business the meeting with Mbeki was not going to achieve much anyway.

“Mde said the organisation’s leadership had informed Mbeki’s office a week ago it was not going to attend the meeting on Friday because of the annual national conference at which Cosatu’s branches were to give report-backs to the leadership about day-to-day issues, in preparation for the federation’s upcoming congress.”

Thus the truth is that Messrs Vavi, Mde and their Cosatu colleagues had better things to do than meet the president. Mde, who rather remarkably was afterwards hired by your newspaper to report “impartially” on Mbeki, openly called Mbeki a liar, without substantiation — just as his former boss, Vavi, has now called Mbeki a dictator without substantiation.

It is, I suppose, a wonderfully South African paradox that a leading political journalist at our leading financial newspaper, Mde, should be an embedded cadre of a trade union populist, Vavi.

But the least you owe your unsuspecting business readership is to ensure that the newspaper does not catch flu, so blatantly manifesting the bad habits of the Pravda school tie.

Cape Town**
 * Ronald Suresh Roberts


 * From: []**

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