In a modern day equivalent of the boy telling his fellow townsfolk to stop crying wolf when they are already half-digested, Adriaan Basson on Monday scolded the readers of News24 for treating Cyril Ramaphosa like a “saint” – after Basson virtually led Ramaphosa’s deification over the past few years. Aside from the pungent hypocrisy of it all, Basson is at least correct when he belatedly describes Ramaphosa as a “politician who loves power” who is “certainly not…the saintly reincarnation of Nelson Mandela.”
But just when it looked like Basson may have finally awoken to the reality that Ramaphosa is merely another ANC cadre who puts party before country – and that South Africa urgently needs to move on from the era of ANC domination – he goes on to make the profoundly dishonest statement that the DA is “hard at work to prove their irrelevance when it comes to serious matters of national interest.”
With this statement, Basson is even more disingenuous than usual in his criticism of the DA. The truth is that the DA has in recent months consistently led the fight for truth, justice, progress and transparency on the most critical issues of national interest.
Where was Adriaan Basson when DA-leader John Steenhuisen was on the ground alongside affected communities throughout KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in the midst of the recent violent looting? Should we really believe that Basson is unaware that it was Steenhuisen who wrote to Ramaphosa proposing solutions to stop the looting, and that Ramaphosa only visited KwaZulu-Natal a week after Steenhuisen had already been there? Is Basson unaware that it is the DA that is working to rebuild and unite communities torn apart during the riots?
Are we supposed to believe that Adriaan Basson is truly unaware that it was the DA that first requested the Zondo Commission to investigate ANC cadre deployment for the way in which it lays the foundation for state capture and corruption? Does the editor of News24 really not know that it was the DA that suggested that the Commission subpoena the minutes of deployment committee meetings? That it was the DA that sent a list of questions on cadre deployment to the Commission months ago already, and that many of those questions were used by the evidence leaders to expose the inherent evil of Ramaphosa’s cadre deployment system? Does he not know that the DA is fighting an ongoing court battle to force the ANC to make public all records and minutes of its cadre deployment committee meetings?
Is Basson not informed about the DA’s work to protect the right of South Africans to defend themselves from criminals, and to protect our Constitution by thwarting the ANC and EFF’s attempts to tear up property rights? Does Basson, a resident of the Western Cape, not know about the province’s world-class response to the coronavirus pandemic, and does he not know about the work of various DA-led municipalities to reduce load-shedding by becoming independent of Eskom?
Does it not stretch credulity that Basson seems unaware that the DA recently tabled private member’s bills in Parliament to reduce the burden of red tape on business and end cadre deployment in the public service?
And if Adriaan Basson is indeed aware of all this, does he then really regard the reconstruction of bleeding communities in the wake of unprecedented violence, the battle against cadre deployment, the need to protect the rights to self-defence and property rights, and to make it easier to do business in South Africa, as not being “serious matters of national interest?”
It seems there are only three possible explanations for Basson’s apparent ignorance on these matters. He is either so ill-informed that he really does not know about the DA’s work in these critical areas, views these issues as unimportant, or simply prefers to spread untruths about the DA rather than acknowledge the party’s dedicated work on these serious matters of national interest.