LETTER TO MAHLAMBA NDLOPFU: Sies for Sisisi’s creative accounting and the cat with crocodile tears

It’s been a wild time for statecraft as a paper trail leads us to a minister’s game, dumbbells ring for JZ, Mbalula blubs, the head of the police pulls a Terminator and Carrim does that which is haram.

Dive Deeper

Speed Read

Summary

Listen

Ah, Chief Dwasaho! Some, if not all, Daily Maverick readers know me as a smart aleck. A few reckon I am a bad apple, a loose cannon and an armchair critic of our political establishment. Truth be told, my leader, I am a cold fish. Nothing excites me. Not even the discovery that politicians have mistaken the public purse for a family inheritance.

Take the simpletons going gaga over former social development minister Nokuzola “Sisisi” Tolashe’s innovative economic development strategy. While the country was talking about job creation, our Sisisi allegedly pioneered something revolutionary: taxpayer-funded household groceries.

According to the Public Service Commission (service plus commission equals File 13), our Sisisi allegedly turned a food aide into a household breadwinner. A little salary inflation here, a little grocery money there, and voilà! The taxpayer becomes an unwitting venture investor of family enterprise. My leader, who needs the National Treasury when you can run a private feeding scheme through the public payroll?

Sisisi previously safeguarded Chinese-donated ANC cars, albeit on the road. Unlike party bank accounts, they survived. Good heavens, my leader. What more do these ungrateful South Africans want?

A woman creates employment, improves a salary grade, stimulates household consumption and introduces an innovative family-based resource redistribution model. Four economic interventions at one go. Who needs the National Development Plan?

Yet the marauding, poorly educated, perennial pain-in-the-neck media refuses to recognise innovation when it arrives draped in an ANC Women’s League doek. Everyone these days prefers blue.

Poor Sisisi. Yesterday, she was a Grade A Thuma Mina poster girl. Today, she is being paraded as exhibit A in the ANC’s travelling circus of selective morality. The same comrades who once applauded her revolutionary credentials have suddenly discovered the Public Service Act.

My leader, I refuse to join this chorus of manufactured outrage. Sisisi is merely accused of doing what our political establishment has perfected as a governing philosophy: gaming the system. The only difference is that hers came with a paper trail. We do not hate her because she allegedly gamed the system. We hate her because she got caught.

Setting the cat among the public

And so we turn to Fikile Mbalula, the ANC’s secretary-general, who cried, sweated profusely and nearly collapsed after the Constitutional Court rescued 181 of his party’s candidates from electoral oblivion. Hayibo, my leader. A revolutionary overcome by the emotional burden of administrative incompetence.

Then every social media correspondent became an award-winning columnist offering psychological assessments of our weeping revolutionary. One Xolani Majola, reporting live a mere stone’s throw from the notorious KwaMashu men’s hostel in Durban, delivered this masterpiece on his Facebook page: “Fikile is hyper-ventilating and in touch with his feline side. On the one hand, Helen is drifting and spinning cars, exploring her masculine disposition. Politics in South Africa is such a spectacle!”

Yho! Feline side? Not feminine? My leader, I couldn’t care less whether this was a typographical accident or a Freudian slip. Majola has given us the political metaphor of the century. Our revolutionary secretary-general has discovered his inner domestic cat. Meow!

But beneath the tears lies a less amusing spectacle. Here is a man presiding over the decline of arguably the finest political machinery ever assembled in democratic South Africa. Under his watch, the once formidable ANC struggles to perform the administrative task of correctly submitting electoral candidates. It then celebrates judicial rescue as though it had liberated the country for a second time.

My leader, crocodile tears will not cut it. Mbalula is the wet blanket of South African politics, a man who mistakes political theatre for organisational leadership. Yet, for once, I must congratulate him. He entertained us without insulting our intelligence through another marathon press conference.

Not to be outdone, former president Jacob Zuma reportedly lay on his deathbed. His party insisted he was healthy and in good spirits. A routine medical check-up, nogal – eight days. Then his daughter produced a video of the old man pumping iron. My leader, is it just me, or has the Zuma soap opera graduated from political suspense to medical gymnastics?

Revolving doors

After that performance, my leader, I was about to telephone my psychiatrist to report Madlanga Commission withdrawal syndrome when you, in your infinite wisdom, announced the return of SAPS national commissioner General Fannie Masemola.

The dark horse was back in the saddle. The court withdrew the charges against him, yet you kept him waiting for 24 days. Perhaps you spent that time studying the court’s literary contribution: “Charges withdrawn.” Two words, my leader. Even a clever Dick like me could finish that judgment before breakfast.

Was this a Machiavellian manoeuvre or plain political interference? I ask because the timing is exquisite. Shadrack Sibiya, deputy national commissioner for Crime Detection, left the police service with a “dishonourable discharge”. Days later, Masemola returns.

Geez! Which manual governs this choreography? The one instructing the big cheese to wait outside until the bad apple deputy has packed his bags?

Sibiya exhibits cartel behaviour: cornered – shut up, swallow a SIM card and cry wolf. Before arrest – wipe the phones clean. Disciplinary proceedings – resign. Case closed. A tough cookie, my leader, and a mastermind of cartel intrigue.

As the scriptwriters ran out of material, former ANC North West treasurer Suliman Carrim was arrested at OR Tambo airport for refusing to answer Madlanga’s questions. Dubai entered the gossip before the words “You’re under arrest”. Eight bags. No return ticket.

Despite his long-term residency in Madlanga’s private medical ward, he could still travel. The state merely offered alternative accommodation – police cells, minus WiFi and halaal food. Lying is haram (forbidden) in Islam, except, apparently, for Carrim.

As Daily Maverick readers know, I do not believe in coincidences. Sibiya exits. Masemola returns. Carrim is arrested. Mbalula cries. Zuma returns. Five separate developments, perhaps, but one grand South African production of political surrealism.

Till next week, my man. Send me to the nearest cinema. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R39. The e-edition of Daily Maverick’s weekly newspaper, DM168, is now free for readers who are signed into their Daily Maverick account. Click on the cover of the newspaper below to access the e-edition.

Op-eds

DM168

Fikile Mbalula

ANC

Fannie Masemola

Madlanga Commission

Sisisi Tolashe

Suliman Carrim

Shadrack Sibiya

Bhekisisa Mncube