By Nco Dube
Politics is a dirty game. It is so dirty that no one, absolutely no one can play it and come out smelling of roses. Western Cape Premier and DA Leader Helen Zille is learning this the hard way. I’m not sure if it’s the sheer arrogance, which has characterised DA politics in recent times, or just plain naivete that she thought no one will follow the story that she and her party received numerous large donations after the DA started accusing the Guptas and their newspaper of corruption.
True to form, after newspaper reports that Telkom, Eskom and Transnet have spent a total of R27m sponsoring the New Age Newspaper Breakfast Briefing series, the DA announced Zille was pulling out a scheduled appearance and duly condemned the sponsorship as corrupt.
I agree that it is a bit curious that the Breakfasts were sponsored exclusively by State Owned Enterprises but the blame for that cannot be put on the newspaper itself but on the SOE’s. the DA argument that it is corrupt for a business to seek sponsorship when it can cover its costs from the ticket sales is shoddy and disingenuous. Businesses always seek sponsorship that will result in them making a profit. The New Age is a private business that seeks to make profit so why should it limit its sponsorship potential.
The issue should be whether the SOE’s followed proper protocols in sponsoring the events and did they benefit as envisaged through such sponsorships?
After pulling out of the scheduled appearance at one of these breakfasts Premier Zille claimed not to have known that the breakfasts were sponsored by the SOE’s. The New Age hit back by releasing a video of a copy of the Premier thanking Telkom for making breakfast she appeared in a year ago, possible through sponsorship! This did not appear to faze Premier Zille as she stubbornly accused the New Age of siphoning money from Government via their corrupt relationship with the ANC and President Zuma.
This has been an amusing little circus as the Premier was caught in a lie at every corner. Next, it emerged that she had received on behalf of her party various donations from the same Gupta family. Seemingly, its ok to get money for her party from the very same people she accuses of corruptly siphoning money from Government.
When I pointed this contradiction out to her on social network Twitter, she responded: “That would assume we had received money from them after we found out about the siphoning of public money. Get logical pls”. This is rather curious seeing that the Premier has been accusing the Guptas of benefitting corruptly from Government through their relationship with President Zuma since at least 2009 and she knowingly took money from them since then until at least 2011.
In her statement released a few days later Premier Zille claimed to have gone to the Gupta house to meet the mystery donor (she has since named the donor in public in contrast to DA policy as Sahara Computers CEO, Stefaan Nel) who turned out to be a Gupta company executive and received a cheque from him. She claims the DA sent a letter of thanks to the Guptas as courtesy since she had dinner at their house.
The not so mysterious donor denies this though, according to latest media reports, he claims the Premier knew the donation was from the Guptas and he was merely facilitating it as a Gupta employee. He also claims money came from Sahara Holdings (main Gupta company) and not his pocket.
What has been most interesting about the whole ZilleGate scandal is how the mainstream media is handling it. Gone are the experts and commentators who offer their invaluable opinion and analysis on any matter and all we see is the vilification of their own, the New Age and the carrying of Zille’s responses to the last full stop without any usual comment and analysis.
This has gone as far as the Twitter hashtag used for the scandal, #infogate. This was chosen by the DA and picked up by journalists and media as gospel. The very same journalists who claim independence have come up with a number of nametags themselves before like #nkandlagate etc but when it comes to this there is no #ZilleGate but they follow what the DA desires the scandal to be called.
It would be naïve to believe that we have a free and balanced media in this country. With the reporting on the Zille/Gupta story the media has stooped to their lowest. There is not even a ruse of trying to seem as if they are trying to report in a balanced way.
It’s clear that the New Age is suffering for its perceived sympathetic stance towards Government and the ANC. What is wrong with that in an environment where almost all media outlets are sympathetic to the opposition?
As for Helen Zille and the DA they have shown that its difficult in politics to keep a totally clean nose and to hold themselves to the same standards they hold the ruling party. But why is it so difficult?
In her recent statement Zille claimed that publicly outing their funders would invite the wrath of the ANC for the funders and will result in the death of all smaller political parties in SA. But contrary to this only her party and the ANC are opposed to this. The rest of the parties in parliament have over the years called for publication of political party donors and funders.