IT WAS amusing to read that new Correctional Services Minister is “standing by” the decision of her predecessor, , to release Schabir Shaik despite the abundantly clear fact that he is not, and never was, terminally ill. It sounds so honourable, doesn’t it? Harry Truman would probably still be “standing by” his decision to unleash nuclear holocaust on Japan if he were still with us. Adolf Hitler would no doubt be “standing by” the Final Solution. Peter de Villiers is “standing by” his insistence that the Lions coach never congratulated him after the second rugby Test. Hell, is probably still “standing by” his position that HIV can’t cause AIDS.
So whether you’re an untouchable like Truman, a murderer like Hitler, a liar like De Villiers, or just a bit demented like Mbeki, “standing by” your most disgraceful moment is a way of living with it if you’re a public figure . But what is special about Mapisa-Nqakula’s “standing by” the Shaik decision is that it isn’t even her decision she is “standing by”. It was Balfour’s craven, vain attempt to keep a cabinet job under Zuma. This is cartoon leadership.
As it stands, the law says you should get parole only when you are in the last stages of a terminal illness. So you get to die at home. Shaik is so well now, however, that he goes out to restaurants. No doubt he is responding brilliantly to some miracle new treatment for high blood pressure. Either that or getting out of jail just gets everything working normally again.
It is Mapisa-Nq akula’s brand of false sincerity, though, that is already eating away at ’s authority in the party. It isn’t real and it isn’t true. Shaik was removed from prison and the charges against Zuma were dropped so he could become president. And for what?
Already there is a new leadership battle on in the ANC. Already Zuma is so disrespected that mere party officials feel free to discipline Cabinet ministers without reference to him. He is in danger of becoming a figurehead, a useful device to have occupying the hot seat while a battle for future power rages on around him. Read Karima Brown’s important piece on the opposite page and you’ll know what I mean.
NOW the cement industry is being investigated for price collusion. You have to ask yourself what kind of businessmen (they’re mainly men) we’ve been growing in SA over the years. Have any of them had to survive in a competitive market like all the little guys they seem to have such contempt for? Like the bakery companies which, it turned out, were all so badly managed they had to agree on prices so they wouldn’t have to suffer the consequences of not being able to compete!
I wonder about all those guys who used to run American when it was this large blob that sat on everything here — how smart did you have to be, really? You already owned everything, so all you had to be was a sort of glorified cost controller. Yet we called them “captains of industry” and the like. What tosh! They were just managers.
South African business isn’t capitalist, it’s oligopolist. I suspect most large South African companies (perhaps not retailers) couldn’t cope with direct competition. Yet this is the model we are now supposed to be “transforming”. Only it isn’t being “transformed”, it’s just being painted another colour. God help us. If the ANC was serious about punishing big business for supporting apartheid, it would force more competition on it, but that is probably the last thing emerging black big business wants to see.
WHAT’s there to say about the rugby on Saturday? Peter de Villiers got to pick a team of his own for pretty much the first time since he became coach and we lost to a second-string side. Prepare for more of the same. All other things aside, he just isn’t up to the job.