SAM DITSHEGO
On Sunday evening (25th August) af- ter listening to a circus into which the SABC television and Narius Mo- loto have turn the PAC, I read PAC founding President Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe’s grand- daughter’s preface to the book, Lie on Your Wounds published in 2019 by Wits University Press, selected and edited by Derek Hook. Lie on Your Wounds is a book of Sobukwe’s cor- respondence from 1960 to 1969.
The SABC ignored two court judgements that went against Moloto. The court ruled that the 29 – 31 August 2019 elective conference is the legitimate one. However, Moloto organ- ised a congress last weekend against the court judgement. The SABC undermined legitimate PAC internal process by declaring a delinquent person PAC president.
The SABC kept repeating the refrain that the PAC has re-elected Narius Moloto its president the whole bloody day even after PAC Secre- tary General Apa Pooe had explained what the situation is. Florence Letoaba came on after the Agenda anchor kept on interrupting Apa Pooe and went on with the same refrain. I think Pooe explained the situation that obtains very well and my advice is that he should no longer entertain interviews on Moloto and his faction because Moloto is no longer a member of the PAC because the Disciplinary Committee of the PAC has expelled him.
Secondly, the SABC should be hauled over the coals through the courts they undermine and be interdicted and sued for being used as an ideological tool against the PAC as well as spreading malicious propaganda against the organisation. The inept and incompetent man- agement and rickety board should be taken to task and be made to apologise to the nation for Sunday’s faux pas.The SABC kept repeating the refrain that the PAC has re-elected Narius Moloto its president the whole bloody day even after Apa Pooe had explained what the situation is.
Florence Letoaba came on after that Agenda anchor who kept on interrupting Apa Pooe and Letoaba went on with the same refrain. I think Pooe explained the situation that obtains very well and my advice is that he should no longer entertain interviews on Moloto and his faction because Moloto is no longer a member of the PAC.
Secondly, the SABC should be hauled over the coals through the courts they undermine and be interdicted and sued for being used as an ideological tool against the PAC as well as spreading malicious propaganda against the organisation.
The ink in the Tlholoe damning report had hardly dried but the SABC is embroiled in yet another scandal. Next time SABC journal- ist interrupts Apa Pooe, he should keep quiet and ask him/her if he/she has nished talking. When he/she says yes, then tell them if they were going to keep on interrupting him when he is trying to explain the confusion the SABC itself is helping to create about the PAC, he is going to abandon the interview.
An interview is an interview; it is not like an interrogation, a cross examination or an argument. Pooe should make it clear to these tendentious SABC apparatchiks and draw the distinction between an interview, an interroga- tion, a cross examination and an argument.
I would like to quote a few lines from the book.
“The seven-year old me was oblivious to this atmosphere of solitude. The place where my grandfather stood for his battle, longed for his family, and wept in his loneliness was the same place that framed my warm, explorative childhood. I didn’t realise the weight of the is- land nor the signi cance of its history.
“But ten years later, I understood. Intimately complex and profound – I realised that some- how my surroundings had brought me closer to a man that I had never met and opened my eyes to an identity I had never fully grasped…
“What Sobukwe started in South Africa, the unconditional passion he devoted to his movement, I realised, was the same re that would ignite mine, whatever it be, in my life. Energy can never be created or destroyed, but only transferred or changed from one form to another…
“How ironic life is, that Robben Island pris- on was to me not only a home, but one of the most liberating experiences of my life. And so, it is in this spirit that I encourage you to read the letters that my grandfather Sobukwe wrote, because captured in his words is not only his pain, but the beauty of his pain as a sacri ce for freedom.”
Sobukwe suffered for the people of South Africa and the PAC. Internalise “the uncondi- tional passion Sobukwe devoted to his move- ment, his pain which he endured as a sacri ce for freedom”.
Anybody who grasps and has the emotional intelligence of what this means would not kick the PAC like a football.