Timing of Manyi outrage suspicious

Much has been made of the scathing letter addressed to Black Management Forum leader Jimmy Manyi by Trevor Manuel, the minister of national planning.

Noted academic and analyst Adam Habib surmised as much yesterday saying “strategic calculations are being made about the Western Cape. I cannot imagine that he has not consulted widely on this matter. I think there would have been a strategic calculation made”. Habib does go on, however, to note a tone of personal affront in Manuel’s letter regardless.

The interesting thing about this uproar as I noted yesterday is that the comments were made last year. Almost a full year elapsed between Manyi making his comments and Manuel responding with his indignant outrage.

Think about it, a director general of labour makes a comment in March 2010. A minister for planning, ex-Treasury, writes an angry letter about those comments in February 2011. That gap is telling.

It means Mr Manuel was not aware of the comments all this time, odd given Manyi’s high profile and the propensity for the media to make a furore over his statements or he knew of them but was not particularly moved either way.

That Manuel himself is a senior, coloured ANC leader; is part of the ANC’s task force in addressing the Western Cape electoral battleground and crucially that we are in an election year all just adds to the intrigue.

Also curious of course is how these comments flew under the radar for all of 2010 only to be sensationally racist a year later. Neither the media nor opposition parties made much of them last year. In the same manner that the Democratic Alliance saw fit to only release recordings of Manyi suggesting bargaining skills were behind Indians doing exceedingly well in getting themselves empowered and recognised in management areas, just yesterday.

I cannot understand why racism is not exposed as and when it happens. That to me is how it should be. So if Manyi or anyone for that matter espouses backward thinking, why sit on it?

Does alleged racism against coloureds only matter on the eve of elections where the coloured vote is crucial? Are coloured leaders asking that question?

Someone please explain this to me, as if I am a five-year-old.

This article first appeared on www.newstime.co.za