THE Saturday morning after the 2004 election results were posted, I was rather tired and was enjoying an unaccustomed lie-in.
The DA had – in the teeth of the fiercest opposition infighting, the newly arrived Independent Democrats on its left, the vengeful New National Party on its right, and the huge ANC everywhere else – posted a creditable result and increased its support from five years earlier.
Any relief I felt evaporated when I reached the op-ed page of the Weekend Argus. It was dominated by an article under a large headline saying “Tony Leon must go”.
The report culled various leaks from the small (fewer than 30 members) party federal executive meeting, which suggested that Zille had launched a root-and-branch attack at the meeting on her former protege, Mazibuko.
Within hours, Zille had published a special edition of her newsletter under the headline, “The abuse of media to drive internal agendas in the DA”. She provided a blow-by-blow version of her recollection of the meeting, which she said had been distorted by the Sunday Times to advance “the succession agendas” of certain unnamed party leaders.
Let me add that the reporter concerned, Jan-Jan Joubert, does not practise “cash for articles” or any other unethical versions of journalism.
None of this is pretty, and none of it advances the party cause or the interests of its voters who so recently placed four-million votes behind it.
Nor does it do anything to help the cause of the new parliamentary leader, who will take over in what are now the most difficult of circumstances.
I am not sure that seeking meetings with newspaper editors to change the narrative or expose the agendas, or whatever, will really do much to staunch the leaks, an age-old phenomenon which Zille herself, as a political journalist in the 1970s and 1980s, benefited from in her own reportage.
Rather, heed the advice of Tony Blair to his fractious, but electorally successful, Labour Party: “When you look inside you lose, when you look outside you win.”
Tony Leon is the former leader of the DA and also served as ambassador to Argentina for the Zuma cabinet
Don’t feed a gossip fire, but starve it of oxygen
The DA had – in the teeth of the fiercest opposition infighting, the newly arrived Independent Democrats on its left, the vengeful New National Party on its right, and the huge ANC everywhere else – posted a creditable result and increased its support from five years earlier.
Any relief I felt evaporated when I reached the op-ed page of the Weekend Argus. It was dominated by an article under a large headline saying “Tony Leon must go”.
The report culled various leaks from the small (fewer than 30 members) party federal executive meeting, which suggested that Zille had launched a root-and-branch attack at the meeting on her former protege, Mazibuko.
Within hours, Zille had published a special edition of her newsletter under the headline, “The abuse of media to drive internal agendas in the DA”. She provided a blow-by-blow version of her recollection of the meeting, which she said had been distorted by the Sunday Times to advance “the succession agendas” of certain unnamed party leaders.
Let me add that the reporter concerned, Jan-Jan Joubert, does not practise “cash for articles” or any other unethical versions of journalism.
None of this is pretty, and none of it advances the party cause or the interests of its voters who so recently placed four-million votes behind it.
Nor does it do anything to help the cause of the new parliamentary leader, who will take over in what are now the most difficult of circumstances.
I am not sure that seeking meetings with newspaper editors to change the narrative or expose the agendas, or whatever, will really do much to staunch the leaks, an age-old phenomenon which Zille herself, as a political journalist in the 1970s and 1980s, benefited from in her own reportage.
Rather, heed the advice of Tony Blair to his fractious, but electorally successful, Labour Party: “When you look inside you lose, when you look outside you win.”
Tony Leon is the former leader of the DA and also served as ambassador to Argentina for the Zuma cabinet
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