EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
LUKANYO MNYANDA: Not owning narrative lands us in a mess
I went back to read Ramaphosa’s original statement, which is no clearer today than it was then
Owning the narrative has become one of those buzzwords in recent years, loved by political advisers, lobbyists and public relations experts. Being a specialist in neither literature nor public relations, I’m not in a position to give a lesson on how the term evolved from being about mere storytelling. While there is no need to dwell on US President Donald Trump’s outrageous tweet about SA’s land reform programme, not least because his famously short attention span probably means he’s moved on to the next distraction and he hopefully won’t be giving SA another thought, the rant did provoke a lot of editorial comment across the world, with varying degrees of quality. How much damage it has inflicted on the country is still open to question. It was while reading a particularly bad editorial from one of the international publications, displaying only slightly more knowledge than Trump, who they were ostensibly attacking for his ignorance on the matter, that it dawned on me that perhaps ...
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