Gus Silber: Remembering Pik Botha and His Whataboutery

Whataboutery is the art, in debate and dialogue, of evading a question by deflecting attention to an issue of supposedly equal or greater significance… writes Gus Silber.

It is the easiest and cheapest of rhetorical tactics, dating all the way back to the schoolyard – “I know I am, but what are you?” – which is why it is so beloved of politicians and their flock.

A current example can be found in the airing of the dirty laundering of monies allegedly paid by the embattled VBS Bank to the EFF’s Floyd Shivambu, via his brother, Brian. YES, BUT WHAT ABOUT STEINHOFF?

In light of this, I was reminded today of a classic early example of whataboutery in South African politics, from Pik Botha, formerly Minister of Foreign Affairs in the National Party government.

Pik, who died today at the age of 86, had a certain Brylcreemed charm – he was, after all, a diplomat by training – but he could be brusque and combative in the public spotlight, particularly when faced with journalists who were trying to put him on the spot.

On this occasion, at the height of apartheid in the 1980s, he was being barbecued by an Australian television journalist, for a special on South Africa.

At one point, Pik misplaced his cool, leaned forward in his chair, and said, in that distinctive voice that sounded like a bakkie churning up gravel: “What about the Aboriginals?”

This pretty much stunned the Australian into silence, since it is very hard to respond to whataboutery without getting all whataboutery yourself.

The catchphrase became instant fodder for satirists and cartoonists, although it was eventually overshadowed by Pik’s then-radical prediction, in another interview, that South Africa would one day have a black president.

Post-apartheid, Pik softened somewhat, and in 2000, he announced that he was going to become a member of the ANC.

As Pieter-Dirk Uys once famously said of Pik, who was a good-natured subject of his frequent lampooning: “Pik Botha knows which side his bread is Bothaed.”

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GUS SILBER is a fantastic South African journalist, author, scriptwriter, speechwriter and tweeter. He “plays with words and sometimes works with them too”.
Follow Gus on Twitter: @gussilber or on Facebook: Gus Silber