Perception management is the art of creating facts and selling them as truth. But judging by her article claiming that the DA is deploying “a dangerous conditioning strategy,” Vimlesh Rajbansi’s attempt at perception management (POST, June 5- 10) is a failure.
Without for a moment acknowledging the totalitarian threat of the policies of the EFF and MPK, Rajbansi premises her article against the DA on race, from which she ordains that the DA is basically concerned with reinstating white baasskap.
For years as a group, Independent Newspapers has featured the appeal “Racism stops with me” on the masthead of its publications. One of the meanings of that appeal is to stop seeing race in everything. However, that appeal seems to have eluded Vimesh Rajbansi.
Just because John Steenhuisen and Helen Zille happen to be white, she attempts to conjure up the perception that the DA is out to suppress black unity and that black-led parties “are incapable of effective governance.” On that basis, she attempts to manufacture as a fact that the DA’s intentions are to thwart the interests of the black population. What utter nonsense.
Such jaundiced journalism deserves contempt because it deliberately ignores the principle on which the DA operates – MERIT. It ignores the vast number of black delegates who elected Steenhuisen as their leader based on merit. By her implied claim that the DA is pursuing white baassskap, does it not occur to Rajbansi that she is insulting the integrity of the numerous black DA voters, MPs, and councillors?
Rajbansi scoffs at the DA for rightly branding a coalition of the communist radicals as constituting a “doomsday” prospect for the constitution. Yet in terms of the perception she is attempting to promote, she ignores the dire consequences of that reality and is silent about the fact that even the black ANC has expressed determination to uphold the constitution.
South Africa’s future would be in grave danger if there was no strategy seeking to avoid the “doomsday” prospect of which the DA has warned. That is the blunt reality on which Vimesh Rajbansi should focus instead of propagating false perceptions.
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