It took long enough, but at last the odious Don Mkhwanazi’s stint as chair of the Central Energy Fund (CEF) is over. The claim that the man resigned voluntarily is, of course, nonsense. It is also a pity the Cabinet did not use the opportunity afforded by his departure to make a statement that abuse of taxpayers’ money will not be tolerated.
Unbowed and unrepentant, Mkhwanazi departed with a final swipe at the Mail & Guardian and our reporter Mungo Soggot who did so much to bring the entire saga to the public eye. Reiterating his innocence, Mkhwanazi blamed his fall on a campaign of malice and innuendo against him.
He has publicly claimed that the motivations behind our vendetta will shortly be revealed. Since Mkhwanazi has had thousands of words of garbage to say about the matter since we first broke the story – including accusing us repeatedly of “racism” – why is he so coy now about detailing our “sinister agenda”?
Come on, Don, tell the world why you think our motive was anything other than seeking to expose crooks who play fast and loose with the public purse while claiming to be saviours who will bring riches to the people. Is it because when you talk so easily about “malice and innuendo” you have forgotten that a fox smells its own hole first?
But while Mkhwanazi is history, what of Penuell Maduna, the minister who backed him to the last? In defence of the CEF chair, the minister of minerals and energy trashed his own commission of inquiry into Mkhwanazi’s shenanigans, publicly berated senior civil servants and finally sacked his trusted aide, Thulani Gcabashe, for demanding Mkhwanazi’s dismissal.
Earlier this week Maduna was still trying to persuade the Cabinet to approve a second CEF term for Mkhwanazi. Mercifully, his Cabinet colleagues knew it was time to draw the line.
Why would Maduna, a man who was one of the ruling party’s rising stars, risk so much for sleazy associates such as Mkhwanazi and the Liberian carpet-bagger Emanuel Shaw II?
There is too much dirt in the public arena for Maduna to plausibly plead naive innocence.
For instance, there is the small matter of the kickback. Shaw paid money into the account Mkhwanazi uses to pay the bond on a R2,4-million Johannesburg mansion. We have published documentary proof of this and handed it on to the Office for Serious Economic Offences. Maduna is welcome to peruse it whenever he wishes.
If he actually believes that Mkhwanazi and Shaw were in the clear, he risks the charge that such gullibility is unbecoming for a Cabinet minister, particularly one who has to navigate his way through the notoriously slimy seas of the oil industry.
No doubt Maduna can ignore news-papers – he appears to share Mkhwanazi’s misguided view that we are driven by malice. But he also chose to ignore his acting director general, his deputy director general and Gcabashe, the one-time friend whom he fired.
The other alternatives – that Maduna is mad or that he is being blackmailed – are too far-fetched for serious consideration.
Which leaves us with the suggestion that what the minister really needs is a long vacation … perhaps for a year or two in some exotic location thousands of miles from the Ministry of Minerals and Energy.
Let justice rule
I Did It My Way is a popular ditty of our Frank, too. And often the “my way” of Cape Attorney General Frank Khan is the right way.
From the rape courts he pioneered and the rape cases he has prosecuted to last month’s revolutionary scrapping of the cautionary rule, Frank has been a rumbustious breath of fresh air in a criminal justice system which is often the scene of secondary rape for most women. But allow us, Frank, this time to point you in another way.
Let justice take its course and let the judges be the arbiter of the rape charges laid against businessman Gaby Magomola. The courts are, rightly or wrongly, seen as the prerogative of the rich and famous. The decision to drop the charges against Magomola for reasons not yet disclosed to the public will only reinforce that view.
And let’s not forget that it’s been just a year since Nomboniso Gasa was allegedly raped on Robben Island. Nobody was charged and that case has never seen the light of day in an investigation which was well and truly botched.
That this could happen to Gasa, a well-known political activist, doesn’t inspire women’s confidence in the system. It also symbolises why many victims don’t go public.
In the United States, even a president can go before a court to face charges relating to sexual misbehaviour. Of course, he might also be acquitted or the case dismissed but that is the point: the woman who alleges she was raped by Magomola is demanding the right to have her claims tested by impartial referees.
She wants the case to go to court. We hear your view that innocents shouldn’t be dragged through the courts; but don’t you have to listen to her as well? In the murky world that is date rape, this case could begin to develop the jurisprudence we so badly need to deal with the scourge.