Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane.
Are you angry and confused about what is going on in South African politics right now? Perhaps harbouring a secret suspicion that you are losing your mind, because your sense of reality is being put through the grinder?
Do not despair! It’s not you. It’s everyone else. Or at least all the major players on the national stage.
The current level of spin and misinformation in our politics is astounding – and true across each of the separate but interlocking battles raging right now, from the Gordhapocalypse to StateCaptureGate.
On every side there are participants who are happy to lie, confuse or misdirect the public – by way of us in the media.
That includes many who believe that they are serving the greater good of democracy when they do so. If you think everyone who supports (current at the time of print) Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan is as pure as Lesotho mountain water, think again. Likewise, not all of those who are worried about the probity of the new public protector, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, are exploring their concerns in ways above reproach.
Bad people trying to hide their bad deeds is a bad thing, to be sure. But those with supposedly good intentions applying amoral methods are pretty bad too. The most egregious examples will remain forever behind the curtain, in off-the-record interviews, surreptitious phone calls and anonymous “dossiers” where they live and die. Say what you will about the state of the South African media, a whole lot of outright nonsense is filtered out before the news is made.
But what happens in the full glare of public attention at the hands of some of the top people in government is bad enough.
Gordhan assures us of the good relationship he has with the president who appointed him, just days after he launched a legal sideswipe against the whole of the Cabinet over the banks and dodgy Gupta transactions. The president, eager to have his day in court and see justice done, fights tooth and nail for what seems to be, at best, a temporary reprieve. A still unnamed functionary in Parliament just makes up a press release about the Speaker of the National Assembly – because she never changed her mind, you see.
The new public protector finds it difficult to provide straightforward answers to simple questions such as: What do you intend to do with that “state capture” report locked in a safe? The former public protector starts to dabble in a revision of history.
The country’s prosecutions head suddenly discovers that a criminal case he was so hellbent on pursuing at all costs needs a little more time to pin down, and, hey, perhaps it is not that big a deal after all.
It is hard to believe that any of them are being entirely honest with us. By that we mean not that they are lying, just that it is hard to believe them. Sometimes their evasions have a firm legal basis – there are things they cannot say without breaking the spirit of the law. Sometimes they engage in the kind of politics we pay them to play – to get foreign investment, for instance.
Just remember, it’s not you, it’s them. And now is a great time to adopt a cynically detached attitude towards all things political.