By Isaac Mpho Mogotsi
I have read the tribute by one Bram Hanekom to Jessie Duarte, which seems to have been triggered more by a need to attack and insult comrade Carl Niehaus than to pay ‘tribute’ to Jessie Duarte, with some incredulity. As Hanekom says, he would not normally have considered writing a tribute but for the need that he apparently felt to “call Carl Niehaus out”.
Hanekom seems to go out from the erroneous assumption that comrade Carl Niehaus wrote his honest and forthright piece about Jessie Duarte with the intention to insult her. I have read that piece, and I could not find even a single indication of such an intention.
In fact, to the contrary, comrade Carl acknowledged Jessie Duarte as a comrade and, similar to what Hanekom does in his ‘tribute’, generously recognised her forthrightness and loyalty to the ANC and the contribution she made in her support for Palestine against apartheid Israel. I dare say that with regards to all of these matters, comrade Carl did a far better job in honouring Jessie than the rather short shoddy piece that Hanekom penned. No doubt, the reason for this is that the intention of Hanekom’s piece was, first and foremost, to attack and insult comrade Carl rather than to pay tribute to Jessie and do justice to her legacy.
The greatest honour and justice that can be done to those who have departed from us is honesty. I am one of those who has a strong aversion to the sickening tendency in our culture to heap insincere praises onto those who passed on, to the extent that one ends up not being able to even recognise the person. Similarly, I have great difficulty to recognise Jessie Duarte in the attack piece on comrade Niehaus that Hanekom wrote.
I ask myself, is this the same Jessie Duarte who threw the Secretary-General of the ANC, comrade Ace Magashule, so comprehensively under the bus and rushed with indecent haste to take over his duties as Secretary-General of the ANC when he was so shamefully forced out of the ANC Secretary-General’s Office?
Once she had grabbed power, is this the same Jessie Duarte that failed to defend President Jacob Zuma in his greatest hour of need after Nxamalala had for decades been unsurpassed in his comradeship and loyalty to her? Is this the same Jessie Duarte who arrogantly dismissed, with one paragraph, a very serious complaint that ANC members in good standing from all nine provinces sent to her asking her to intervene and ensure that Cyril Ramaphosa is charged for having contravened the ANC Constitution, in having used huge sums of money to buy his election as president of the ANC?
I saw that Jessie’s brother, Zane Dangor, led the charge against comrade Carl on social media for not having sugar-coated her life. While one can have some sympathy for grieving family members who obviously will find it difficult, if not impossible, to be objective, I do not feel any need to extend such understanding to the knee-jerk hagiographic defence by Hanekom.
My criticism of the piece that comrade Carl Niehaus wrote about Jessie Duarte is that he was actually far too soft on her. While I accept that Jessie Duarte had made a contribution to the liberation struggle, her actions after 1994, even before she became DSG, hardly covered her in glory.
During the latter part of her political life, Jessie became a piece of work who betrayed and destroyed the lives of many comrades. This she did with unparalleled arrogance and nasty vindictiveness. One of the things that I wanted comrade Carl to write about, and which I believe he was wrong in omitting, is how Jessie constantly attacked and undermined him in 2008 and 2009, when he was brought back to the ANC as spokesperson, because as the then spokesperson of the ANC, Jessie made an utter unmitigated hash of failing to protect and defend the then newly elected President Jacob Zuma.
It is commonly known in the ANC that it was Jessie who leaked all kinds of stories and lies about comrade Carl to journalists and precipitated and stoked the unparalleled vicious attacks that almost destroyed him. Such evil she did for no other selfish reason other than to cling to her job as spokesperson, in which comrade Carl’s brilliancy as a media spokesperson showed her up to have been totally incompetent and temperamentally unsuited for.
It is an open secret in ANC circles that Jessie was the one who maliciously leaked and spread the poison against comrade Carl. Gwede Mantashe, who was, at that stage, the Secretary General of the ANC, knows it very well, but today - after he was complicit in the betrayal of comrade Carl - he goes around and drunkenly insults him and adds insult to injury, by slurring away in a haze of booze that he is a ‘hired gun’.
The late Karima Brown, who, at the time when Jessie ran her shameful propaganda leaks against comrade Carl, was Editor of the Independent Media Group, acknowledged that Jessie was the person who leaked stories to her and urged her to run a smear campaign against comrade Carl. To her credit, although she and comrade Carl were often not of the same political persuasion, Karima refused to do so. It turned out that Ferial Haffajee, who was then Editor of the Mail and Guardian and friendly with Jessie since their youth, was prepared to do her dirty work for her. Aikona, these people have no shame. They are thugs and charlatans of note!
One can say many things about comrade Carl, but one thing that he is most certainly not, is a ‘coward’. Hanekom’s pathetic efforts to call him such falls totally flat in the face of the ample evidence of comrade Carl’s huge courage in his unparalleled support for President Jacob Zuma and comrade Ace Magashule.
Comrade Carl was also certainly not scared to take Jessie on when she was still alive and when she so cowardly attacked him on national television while he was gravely ill with Covid-19 and was in ICU in Millpark Hospital, fighting for his life. From his hospital bed, he posted a message calling her out, expressing his deep disappointment at her doing so. Instead of hanging her head in shame, Jessie ratcheted up her uncouth attack on him, and served him in hospital with disciplinary charges for having told her that he was disappointed in her. I know who stands exposed as the coward in this equation, and it is certainly not comrade Carl!
One thing I also know is that if there is any comrade I would want to cover my back on a battlefield, it is comrade Carl Niehaus. He is a fighter and the most loyal person I know. In fact, I always say that if loyalty was a person, that person is Carl Mpangazitha Niehaus. The contrary is true for Jessie Duarte, just go and ask President Zuma, comrade Ace Magashule, together with the many other comrades who have been her victims and who have knife wounds in their backs to show for it.
In private dark corners, Jessie constantly whispered that she hated Cyril Ramaphosa, that he was an agent of White Monopoly Capitalism and could not be trusted, but in public, she never had the courage to speak up, and call him out. On the contrary, she defended Ramaphosa to the hilt and, in doing so, betrayed her own most loyal comrades.
There are those who say that she did so because she was scared that the close dealings that she, her close family members, and children had with the Guptas would have been revealed by Ramaphosa if she did not defend him and did not do his dirty work for him. All of this Jessie did while looking on at how President Zuma, and his son Duduzane, were crucified for having been friendly with the Guptas. Now, Bram Hanekom, if you want the personification of cowardice, there you have it!
One should not be forced to make such choices - especially when a person passed on - but the dribble that Bram Hanekom wrote now forces me to say this: In a choice between comrade Carl Niehaus and Jessie Duarte, I would, without a moment of hesitation, choose Mpangazitha a million times above her.
*Isaac Mpho Mogotsi is the Executive Chairman: Centre for Economic Diplomacy in Africa (CESA)