Where does the ANC find people like social development minister Sisisi Tolashe?
The minister hired a director-general on a five-year contract and signed it. Now she has brought disciplinary charges against the man for signing the same contract. She says that, because the senior civil servant was due to retire at age 65 next year, he should not have signed a five-year contract when he joined last year. The question is: if the contract was erroneous, why didn’t she point that out then?
She also hired a hopelessly unqualified 22-year-old as her chief of staff. The woman was apparently not even qualified to be Tolashe’s personal assistant, but was hired at this senior level anyway. The Daily Maverick reports that the chief of staff is the niece of the minister’s 32-year-old special adviser. The news site reports that the 65-year-old minister and the special adviser are extremely close, even sharing intimate WhatsApp messages.
The adviser is under investigation for having manoeuvred to draw two government salaries (from Tolashe’s office and from parastatal Northwest Transport Investments) at the same time.
If it sounds tawdry, it is because it is. And if it evokes feelings of depression, well, that’s because this minister is the president of the ANC Women’s League, and she is betraying not just her organisation but every woman out there she is supposed to be championing and representing.
In isolation, this tale would not mean much. In the context of the seven-year-old Ramaphosa administration, however, it represents yet another step towards the total loss of moral and political authority and the delegitimisation of leadership. Such a development is dangerous in the extreme: a government that has lost moral and political authority and legitimacy is susceptible to popular uprisings.
Ramaphosa has stuffed his cabinet with a motley crew of corruption-tainted individuals and political ingénues who have slowly chipped away at his moral and political authority.
Ramaphosa has stuffed his cabinet with a motley crew of corruption-tainted individuals and political ingénues who have slowly chipped away at his moral and political authority
What are frustrated young people, of whom more than 60% are unemployed, to make of the deputy president of the country who lives in mysteriously procured million-dollar houses in Cape Town? The houses may be legally registered in their owners’ names, but that the deputy president and possible future leader of the country, Paul Mashatile, is beholden to these people strips this administration of any moral and political authority to talk about influence-peddling, corruption or crime in general.
How is this administration to speak of tackling crime when the police minister is alleged to have shut down a police unit just as it was getting close to arresting crime kingpins in Gauteng? And it is said that these gangsters were constantly in touch with a comrade of the minister secretly lobbying to have the unit disbanded.
How am I to take the cabinet seriously when former minister of police Bheki Cele called an alleged criminal 10 times before he was arrested? The former minister also used the person’s penthouse.
There are so many more examples of this. That a staggering $580,000 was stuffed in cushions at Ramaphosa’s farmhouse in extremely suspicious circumstances adds to this destruction of legitimacy and authority.
Ramaphosa’s early talk of renewal of the ANC and the state and of cutting the cord with his comrades involved in state capture enhanced the cabinet’s legitimate power to make decisions, enforce laws and command obedience. Few doubted that Ramaphosa and his cabinet had the right to rule.
How many, in the wake of the many betrayals South Africa is subjected to every day by politicians, believe that someone like Tolashe has the authority to be in her position? How many young people out there believe Mashatile is entitled to and has worked to acquire his many houses? Many of Ramaphosa’s ministers don’t, in the eyes of the citizenry, have the moral authority and legitimacy to govern.
If young people believe they are governed by thieves, they may have no qualms about burning and looting. This is what has happened in Nepal, Madagascar, Morocco, Kenya, Peru, Angola and other countries this year.
Tolashe’s transgressions are not trivial. They add to the discontent that has become a feature of South Africa today. They remind us that these things could lead to instability and even insurrection.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.