Opinion - Why is the ANC silent as Julius Malema beats up on Pravin Gordhan? I find the unrestrained personal attack distressing and excruciatingly offensive.
I see it as an unbridled attack on honest and hard-working people, and on the institutions meant to strengthen our democracy.
I cannot in good conscience remain silent. A situation will come to pass where millions of people will pay the price of this unbridled subversion of democracy if it is left unrestrained and unchallenged.
Where are those rational and objective-minded South African readers? Why do they remain silent?
Malema has launched personal, vitriolic sideswipes at Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, who is chairing the commission of inquiry, as well as at Gordhan. This is an attack on a legally-mandated institution, which points to corrupt politicians about whom uncomfortable truths are being unearthed.
Where are those moral, righteous voices who are so quick to write in when attacking softer targets like Muslims? Why are you silent? Be not like the stony sphinx, unmoved by all that is happening.
The vituperative opinions of Malema seem to get more exposure than the witnesses who have testified so far.
The findings of the “Great Bank Heist” report appear to have paled into insignificance.
The media landscape hogged by Malema is fast becoming a kind of epistemic free-for-all, in which “the pure truth” becomes a matter of perspective and agenda.
Where are the intelligentsia among us? Malema is fast becoming the orator-in-chief in the death of our democracy.
I feel as if I'm in that coffin that Malema is trying to bury. I'm being transported to an upside down hell, where assumptions and alignments that once firmly anchored our constitutional democracy are being turned inside out.
This has probably been the longest letter you've read from me so far, but circumstances compelled me to not hold back on my words. Thank you, if you've read through it all.
I, who have lived through and survived an odious history, am once again witness to ominous signs piling up. I'm witness to deep underground cracks and crevices between classes and races, which the age of reconciliation had so laboriously patched up, now breaking open again and deepening into abysses and chasms.
You ignore them at your own peril. I cannot.