Many people were touched by Mr Kgalema Motlanthe’s explanations in last week’s Mail & Guardian as to why the African National Congress not only tolerates but actually relishes having people like fraudster Tony Yengeni in its ranks. The presence of such liars and cheats strengthens the party’s ability to be democratic in giving succour to them. As secretary general of his party, Mr Motlanthe clearly understands and believes this. ANC self-righteousness is a vigorous weed.
Last week Motlanthe deployed a single large airbag to cushion the impact for the ANC’s ex-chief whip. According to him, the whole Yengeni counterfeit, the lying and deception, the arrogance, the entire unsightly hustle has been naught but a case of a mislaid conscience. Somewhere along the relentless, self-immolating line of the struggle, Tony Yengeni lost touch with his conscience and shortly afterwards turned into just another elitist hood.
No one quite knows what happened to Yengeni’s conscience after it had fled its owner. Perhaps, as Tony worked so feverishly as a party whip, his conscience dropped down behind all the tasteful silk suits in his wardrobe; perhaps he ran over it in one of the several discounted luxury Mercedes he owns; maybe he had to pawn it to pay for the full paper Sunday newspaper advertisements he ran protesting his innocence.
If the conscience is missing, the wholesome contempt is still very much in place. Tony Yengeni pitched up to court hearings dressed in a R15 000 silk suit, emerging from yet another R440 000 Mercedes — this one uncannily registered in a friend’s name — in order to plead poverty and bogus regret before the sentencing magistrate. A perfect finger to the world. As Hamlet said: the whip’s hand scorns oft-times.
The polluted Tony Yengeni saga is coming to an end. No doubt he’ll be dealt some sort of token judicial comeuppance later this month. What he clearly won’t be getting are his marching orders from the forgiving parish of the ANC. According to its secretary general, the ANC will merely sit back and wait for Tony and his long-lost conscience to reunite. Once that’s happened all will be forgotten. Forgiving is long done with.
But what will poor Tony do in the meantime? I imagine an important diplomatic posting isn’t out of the question. After all, when the fraudster chips were raining down on Allan Boesak’s head, the ANC desperately tried to reward him with one of those. Allan was proposed for the illustrious Geneva posting, so Tony Yengeni, easily as solemn and phony a hypocrite as Boesak, could well be posted off to somewhere like Bonn where there are Mercedes a-plenty, or Washington. Probably best will be Beijing where he’ll be closer to the silkworms.
Of course, before they set Tony off on the diplomatic chapter of his career, he’ll have to fulfil some arduous local responsibilities. While all the racist brouhaha of the media feast were running riot Tony was appointed by none other than Mr Thabo Mbeki to look into the alarming levels of corruption in the Eastern Cape. It was unkindly speculated that what Thabo really wanted was for Tony to put the said corruption and fraud on a more professional footing: teach all the yokel ‘Conrades” how to speak out of both sides of their mouths at the same time, how to use the word ‘democracy” to justify the pillaging of state resources and generally get Eastern Cape subterfuge, civil service larceny and deception on a par with Mpumalanga’s.
As I say, that was quite unfair to Thabo. All he was actually doing was setting a big thief to catch some smaller ones, while giving Tony a bit of personal space and a chance to try out his half-price Mercedes 4×4 on some really atrocious roads.
Throughout the ghastly witchhunt, one of Tony Yengeni’s most solid champions has been the Speaker of Parliament, Dame-Apparent Frene Ginwala, affectionately known as the Sari With the Whinge on Top. Frene is on record as once having exonerated Tony Yengeni of all arms-deal sinning on the grounds that he, himself, said he was innocent of any underhand dealing. Frene has said that she has no authority by which she can actually expel Yengeni herself. Strangely enough, Mr Yengeni has at last done something honourable and has himself resigned. Now all Frene will have to do is find some parliamentary function that won’t entail Tony actually entering her legislative chamber in any formal political capacity. Whether Tony will consider being an after-hours dustbin organiser is, of course, another matter. Such appointments don’t come with nearly enough parking space.
And so the problem remains: what to do with a cast-off party whip as he continues what Kgalema Motlanthe describes as his ‘humble” search for his cast-off conscience. To reiterate another of the ANC secretary general’s picturesque sentiments: ‘A saint is a sinner who is always trying to correct his ways.” Clearly the entire ANC is due for canonisation.
Archive: Previous columns by Robert Kirby