Minister’s first PR salvo misfires badly

Giving new meaning to the term "a loose cannon", Defence and Military Veterans Minister Lindiwe Sisulu - in the irony of all ironies - when flighting the idea to reintroduce national military service recently, promised parliament a national dialogue before legislation on the subject is introduced, since “this is a sensitive issue and we need to deal with it sensitively”. The next time she went public on the matter was last week when she invited the Julius Malema-led national leadership of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) to attend a special two-week training camp in September. Her invitation came in the same week that Malema was disciplined by the senior party.

When the news of the invitation to the ANCYL broke last week, and smelling trouble for what, in principle, seemed an excellent idea – i.e. voluntary national service – Leadership Intelligence Bulletin telephoned the minister's office to enquire if the invitation is or will be extended to the youth arms of all political parties. We were not even afforded the opportunity to pose our question and were told to phone again on Monday.

By Saturday, Minister Sisulu had to issue a statement to try and dose the fires that flared all over the place from other political parties and organisations.

She did so by launching an attack on opposition parties’ critics as being “ill informed”. The two-week military training session was open to anyone, not only members of the ANCYL.

So much for consensus seeking on “a sensitive issue” – making the announcement, with a special invitation to its leadership – at a meeting of the national executive committee of the ANCYL. The only other news on the matter at the time was that she would be meeting later that week with the Young Communist League.

Briefing the media recently at Parliament ahead of her budget debate in the National Assembly, Minister Sisulu  emphasised that the intended national service would be voluntary, and not compulsory as in the apartheid era.

She added that to put it in place would take time because funds would be required and some of the infrastructure would have to be revitalised and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) would need restructuring to cater for national service, and legislative changes would be necessary to give it the force of a mandate.

Asked at the briefing about the timeframe, Sisulu said it depended on how society at large felt about the idea.

If the response was positive, the process would be faster, but the idea was to seek consensus on the matter.

It was hoped that the necessary legislative changes would be passed within a year, but it would take time to prepare the infrastructure required, so it would take about two years at the outer limit, she said.

It is, however, on this issue of the legislative framework that the ANCYL manoeuvre may prove to have been a serious tactical error, landing the entire process in trouble.

The youth arm of civil rights initiative AfriForum,  AfriForum Youth, immediately responded to the news with a statement in which it said it was considering legal action to investigate whether the proposed military training of the ANCYL leadership was constitutional.

"The implication of the training would be that taxpayers would sponsor the training of a single party's members only, as they will be making exclusive use of state facilities and equipment - an opportunity not accessible to the rest of the country's residents."

This, it said, "contravenes the basic principles of democracy and the Constitution".

Minister Sisulu’s subsequent statement may have gone some way to clear the air, by stating that the SANDF had extended the invitation to the September 2010 special two-week training camp to all youth organisations in the country. The invite to the ANCYL in particular was part of her campaign to extend national service to unemployed youths in the country.

The fact that she did not start off with a general open invitation from a neutral platform, can at best be described as a serious public relations blunder. There is some work to be done now to restore the credibility of the programme which could, as history here and elsewhere in the world has proven, go a long way to building national solidarity across political and other dividing lines.