WITH a significant number of the world’s worst political scandals, it is not the original sin that does the sinner in. It is the cover-up. The regular finale, after attempts at a whitewash have dragged on, is simply that many more accomplices end up spattered with sludge. So it will be with Nkandla, whatever happens in Wednesday’s elections. The cover-up will exact the greatest toll.
Some officials, probably those who fear they are being set up as fall guys, must now wonder how much effort the government will invest in defending President Jacob Zuma and his scandals, compared with time devoted to running the country. The balance seems to be tilting towards full-time crisis management of the imperial kingdom of Zumaland. Thus it is not necessarily the huge sum paid by the public that is the most corrupt aspect of Zuma’s palatial rural estate. It is how voraciously this wretched business has sucked in so many others: ministers, bureaucrats, party officials and, as the election hots up, ordinary loyalists. Many of the growing cast of characters required to join the cover-up may be shallow flunkies or routine careerists. But the sad aspect is that others were principled and brave liberation fighters.
It is an old story: the temptations of power. One of the most tragic figures is Mac Maharaj, a daring hero of the underground struggle, hauled in well after retirement age to employ his quick-witted talents to explain away presidential gaffes and indignities. Perhaps the lowest point of this charade is captured in Richard Calland’s informative book, The Zuma Years. When the author interviewed him, Maharaj brought up the subject of Nkandla himself. He recounted how Zuma had suggested that he should go and take a look at the expanding homestead in order to see what all the fuss was about. Maharaj then admits that he didn’t go — because he didn’t want to put himself in a situation where he might find, in his own words, "something significantly unacceptable".
Spin doctors the world over dissemble and lie. But here is Maharaj, knowing he was on the record, as good as admitting that he simply cannot afford to know the truth. At the same time, his confession implies that Zuma does not appear to think he has done anything wrong — and that accepting vast amounts of public funds for private enrichment is merely his imperial due.
Corruption is not only financial and moral but verbal too. George Orwell constantly pointed out that political degradation starts with lying language. Yet an increasingly magical African National Congress (ANC) line of defence is that black people, no matter how eminent or well-documented their argument, become instantly white if they dare criticise a black government. Blade Nzimande recently defended Zuma by shrilly denouncing incriminating reports over his Nkandla homestead as "lies perpetrated by white people". Nzimande is the general secretary of the South Africa Communist Party (SACP) and widely regarded as a crude Stalinist hack. But he is also Dr Nzimande, the Minister of Higher Education and Training.
Nonetheless, Nzimande is a master of crass bombast. Cheap racial scapegoating is particularly shameful coming from a supposed Marxist, who should disdain ethnic smears for lucid social and economic analysis. Instead, the SACP leader employs dishonest racial invective to defend the grotesque self-enrichment of one man. However, as with most communist parties in post-Second World War Europe, the SACP is no longer remotely revolutionary. Rather, as in France in 1968 or Italy in 1969, it has become a hide-bound, dogma-spouting apparatus of profound political reaction.
Nzimande’s racial bluster could also have unforeseen consequences. Raising racial demons is dangerous. On past evidence, that could potentially fuel xenophobia rather than anti-white fury. In their recent book on xenophobia, Imagined Liberation, Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley quote Sigmund Freud’s phrase, "narcissism of small differences", to show how it is often communities who may appear similar to outsiders that can turn on each other viciously. In Cyprus, it is hard to tell a Greek from a Turk; Serbs and Croats shared the same language but committed atrocities against each other; Hutus and Tutsis not only shared the same language but the same religion. In SA, this syndrome translates into outbursts against foreign black Africans.
Adam and Moodley quote the famous passage from Frantz Fanon: "From nationalism, we have passed to chauvinism, and finally to racism. These foreigners are called on to leave, their shops are burned, their street stalls wrecked…. We observe a permanent seesaw between African unity, which fades quicker and quicker into the mist of oblivion."
This is more likely to be the long-term effect of Nzimande’s racial smears. So you have to wonder, given his boorish vituperation and taste for luxury, whether his understanding of dialectics is quite the same as that of Karl Marx. Spanish writer Jorge Semprún, then a young and confused party member interned in Buchenwald concentration camp, had one possible version explained by a veteran fellow communist. "Dialectics," revealed this older comrade, "is the art and technique of always landing on your feet." That interpretation seems a preferred ideology for the SACP boss.
Not so long ago, ANC leaders presented themselves with dignity, laid out cogent proposals and rebutted opponents with fierce but rational arguments. Verbal thuggery has taken over.
Sports and Recreation Minister Fikile Mbalula, for example, recently weighed in with a new theory about why the Democratic Alliance runs the Western Cape. "We are being governed by witches," he told an election rally in Nyanga. "These witches are oppressing us, they are trampling on us. Where are the tokoloshes and the sangomas so that we can chase these witches away?"
Mbalula’s contribution to integrity in public life is impeccable. In 2008, he was dispatched to Cape Town by ANC headquarters to investigate claims that local ANC bigwig Mcebisi Skwatsha had rigged votes for an impending provincial conference. Mbalula was met at the airport by Skwatsha and Tony Yengeni, the disgraced former ANC MP. To his astonishment, Mbabula discovered that he was scheduled, aged 37, to be circumcised. He attempted to run away. The ingcibi hired to perform this delicate operation complained later that he lost his cellphone in the struggle to subdue Mbalula.
After this unkindest cut, Mbalula was sequestered for a month, the traditional period for a male initiate, so he was unable to report directly on the alleged vote-rigging. Skwatsha was duly elected unopposed as provincial ANC chairman; a result that was later overturned.
Following this triumph, Mbalula was promoted to deputy police minister. When the late Kader Asmal criticised the militarisation of the police, Mbalula responded by calling Asmal, by then retired and dying, a "raving lunatic" who had been "relegated to the dustbin of history". Mbalula also claimed that Asmal was following the agenda of (unspecified) people outside the ANC. There you have the sullied style of this particular faction of ANC hucksters: insult, bombast and smear.
This all falls bleakly short of Amilcar Cabral’s famous exhortation: "Tell no lies, claim no easy victories." Twenty years ago who would have imagined the ANC could sink to such degrading drivel? It’s an epic fall from high hopes to shamefully low expectations.
• Rostron is a freelance journalist and author.
(Left to right) Ministers of the Justice Crime Prevention and Security Cluster State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele, Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa and Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Jeff Radebe brief the media on the security upgrade at President Jacob Zuma's Nkandla residence in December last year. Picture: GCIS
WITH a significant number of the world’s worst political scandals, it is not the original sin that does the sinner in. It is the cover-up. The regular finale, after attempts at a whitewash have dragged on, is simply that many more accomplices end up spattered with sludge. So it will be with Nkandla, whatever happens in Wednesday’s elections. The cover-up will exact the greatest toll.
Some officials, probably those who fear they are being set up as fall guys, must now wonder how much effort the government will invest in defending President Jacob Zuma and his scandals, compared with time devoted to running the country. The balance seems to be tilting towards full-time crisis management of the imperial kingdom of Zumaland. Thus it is not necessarily the huge sum paid by the public that is the most corrupt aspect of Zuma’s palatial rural estate. It is how voraciously this wretched business has sucked in so many others: ministers, bureaucrats, party officials and, as the election hots up, ordinary loyalists. Many of the growing cast of characters required to join the cover-up may be shallow flunkies or routine careerists. But the sad aspect is that others were principled and brave liberation fighters.
It is an old story: the temptations of power. One of the most tragic figures is Mac Maharaj, a daring hero of the underground struggle, hauled in well after retirement age to employ his quick-witted talents to explain away presidential gaffes and indignities. Perhaps the lowest point of this charade is captured in Richard Calland’s informative book, The Zuma Years. When the author interviewed him, Maharaj brought up the subject of Nkandla himself. He recounted how Zuma had suggested that he should go and take a look at the expanding homestead in order to see what all the fuss was about. Maharaj then admits that he didn’t go — because he didn’t want to put himself in a situation where he might find, in his own words, "something significantly unacceptable".
Spin doctors the world over dissemble and lie. But here is Maharaj, knowing he was on the record, as good as admitting that he simply cannot afford to know the truth. At the same time, his confession implies that Zuma does not appear to think he has done anything wrong — and that accepting vast amounts of public funds for private enrichment is merely his imperial due.
Corruption is not only financial and moral but verbal too. George Orwell constantly pointed out that political degradation starts with lying language. Yet an increasingly magical African National Congress (ANC) line of defence is that black people, no matter how eminent or well-documented their argument, become instantly white if they dare criticise a black government. Blade Nzimande recently defended Zuma by shrilly denouncing incriminating reports over his Nkandla homestead as "lies perpetrated by white people". Nzimande is the general secretary of the South Africa Communist Party (SACP) and widely regarded as a crude Stalinist hack. But he is also Dr Nzimande, the Minister of Higher Education and Training.
Nonetheless, Nzimande is a master of crass bombast. Cheap racial scapegoating is particularly shameful coming from a supposed Marxist, who should disdain ethnic smears for lucid social and economic analysis. Instead, the SACP leader employs dishonest racial invective to defend the grotesque self-enrichment of one man. However, as with most communist parties in post-Second World War Europe, the SACP is no longer remotely revolutionary. Rather, as in France in 1968 or Italy in 1969, it has become a hide-bound, dogma-spouting apparatus of profound political reaction.
Nzimande’s racial bluster could also have unforeseen consequences. Raising racial demons is dangerous. On past evidence, that could potentially fuel xenophobia rather than anti-white fury. In their recent book on xenophobia, Imagined Liberation, Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley quote Sigmund Freud’s phrase, "narcissism of small differences", to show how it is often communities who may appear similar to outsiders that can turn on each other viciously. In Cyprus, it is hard to tell a Greek from a Turk; Serbs and Croats shared the same language but committed atrocities against each other; Hutus and Tutsis not only shared the same language but the same religion. In SA, this syndrome translates into outbursts against foreign black Africans.
Adam and Moodley quote the famous passage from Frantz Fanon: "From nationalism, we have passed to chauvinism, and finally to racism. These foreigners are called on to leave, their shops are burned, their street stalls wrecked…. We observe a permanent seesaw between African unity, which fades quicker and quicker into the mist of oblivion."
This is more likely to be the long-term effect of Nzimande’s racial smears. So you have to wonder, given his boorish vituperation and taste for luxury, whether his understanding of dialectics is quite the same as that of Karl Marx. Spanish writer Jorge Semprún, then a young and confused party member interned in Buchenwald concentration camp, had one possible version explained by a veteran fellow communist. "Dialectics," revealed this older comrade, "is the art and technique of always landing on your feet." That interpretation seems a preferred ideology for the SACP boss.
Not so long ago, ANC leaders presented themselves with dignity, laid out cogent proposals and rebutted opponents with fierce but rational arguments. Verbal thuggery has taken over.
Sports and Recreation Minister Fikile Mbalula, for example, recently weighed in with a new theory about why the Democratic Alliance runs the Western Cape. "We are being governed by witches," he told an election rally in Nyanga. "These witches are oppressing us, they are trampling on us. Where are the tokoloshes and the sangomas so that we can chase these witches away?"
Mbalula’s contribution to integrity in public life is impeccable. In 2008, he was dispatched to Cape Town by ANC headquarters to investigate claims that local ANC bigwig Mcebisi Skwatsha had rigged votes for an impending provincial conference. Mbalula was met at the airport by Skwatsha and Tony Yengeni, the disgraced former ANC MP. To his astonishment, Mbabula discovered that he was scheduled, aged 37, to be circumcised. He attempted to run away. The ingcibi hired to perform this delicate operation complained later that he lost his cellphone in the struggle to subdue Mbalula.
After this unkindest cut, Mbalula was sequestered for a month, the traditional period for a male initiate, so he was unable to report directly on the alleged vote-rigging. Skwatsha was duly elected unopposed as provincial ANC chairman; a result that was later overturned.
Following this triumph, Mbalula was promoted to deputy police minister. When the late Kader Asmal criticised the militarisation of the police, Mbalula responded by calling Asmal, by then retired and dying, a "raving lunatic" who had been "relegated to the dustbin of history". Mbalula also claimed that Asmal was following the agenda of (unspecified) people outside the ANC. There you have the sullied style of this particular faction of ANC hucksters: insult, bombast and smear.
This all falls bleakly short of Amilcar Cabral’s famous exhortation: "Tell no lies, claim no easy victories." Twenty years ago who would have imagined the ANC could sink to such degrading drivel? It’s an epic fall from high hopes to shamefully low expectations.
• Rostron is a freelance journalist and author.
News, views and analysis of South Africa's national and provincial elections on May 7 2014
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