Inevitably, the mass-based mainstream media continues to feed South Africans with the faces and rhetoric such as that of Andile Mngxitama.
Mngxitama is the leader of the supposed leftist Black First Land First Movement, which is known to many South Africans of all races as but a Gupta family apologist.
As a journalist who has been around for a period of time — and at some stage a political reporter — I should have a clue just who is Mngxitama. But I do not.
What I have read in the press is that the bearded one has been at the forefront of a mob hell-bent on harassing mainstream media journalists, such as my old-time buddy, Ferial Haffajee.
Also, the other day many listeners on Power FM — targeted at the black middle class — threatened to boycott the talk radio for hosting Mngxitama and his violent rhetoric.
Now at the height of Apartheid, the likes of Haffajee, myself and colleagues such as Helen Zille and Zwelakhe Sisulu, used to get into intense discussions about the liberation doctrine, as espoused by the Progressives of Nelson Mandela, Pan-Africanists of Robert Sobukwe, and the torch-bearers of Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement.
Allow me to once again bore you with the days I spent at the now defunct Rand Daily Mail with another old buddy, Joubert Malherbe.
“Joubs” Malherbe derived pleasure in walking with me to Pretoria’s sidewalk Whites-Only restaurants.
He would wink at me as he lied to the manager that I was a visiting Swazi royal, and could he please allow me to have tea with him. And it worked!
Then there was also Norman Patterten, a colleague at the now collapsed SA Press Association, who always nagged the blue-eyed blonde from the old SAUK (SABC), Erna that, I Johnny Masilela, was in search of a white girlfriend.
Erna was a progressive young woman who also seemed to derive pleasure in this kind of racial humour, responding that “Johnny is ’n pragtige swart mannetjie (Johnny is a beautiful black man)”.
We laughed until there were tears in our eyes about all this, for such is the colour-blind nature of journalists, never mind who is in government.
But then in-between these jokes there were also dead serious political discourse, as to the merits and demerits of a particular political system.
Having said that, can someone out there say to me just who is Andile Mngxitama?
