GARETH VAN ONSELEN: Lindiwe Sisulu’s ethical amnesia

Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu seems quite favourable towards the recently mooted idea of an amnesty for President Jacob Zuma.

That’s a good thing because she should probably apply for amnesty herself. After all, back in 2008 it was Sisulu who helped lead the small ANC "brains trust", which was established to get Zuma off the legal hook. That worked out well — for Zuma. Not so much for the South African Constitution nor the rule of law. But then Sisulu has never really cared much for SA.

Thus, when Sisulu says, "The possibility of amnesty is something that is part and parcel of the character of the ANC" and that, in this regard, "my view, if I am elected leader of the ANC, would be to ensure that whatever happens, the best interests of the ANC prevail", it makes complete sense. Because that’s pretty much exactly how she helped get SA into this mess in the first place: by elevating the ANC and Zuma above the rule of law and actively working to get charges against him quashed.

So, Sisulu might be consistent, but presidential material she is not. Not with that kind of judgment. And, her weak moral conviction is not particular to her dealings with Zuma either.

The ANC’s grand universe — where corruption and nepotism are now defining elements — is replicated a hundred times over in each one of the micro universes that constitute the whole.

Lindiwe Sisulu has for a long time run a small little Zuma-microverse of her own, specifically during her time as minister of defence.

Take Paul Ngobeni for example. As the former deputy registrar for legal services at UCT, he formed part of the "brains trust" the ANC’s national executive committee set up to advise Zuma on how to beat the system. He, along with Sipho Seepe and former judge Willem Heath, worked together with ANC treasurer Mathews Phosa, deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe and, of course, Sisulu among others, to help and advise Zuma on his legal travails.

But Ngobeni was not exactly as he appeared. As it turns out, he was — and still is — a fugitive from justice in the US where he faced a number of criminal charges, including fraud and larcenies. He is barred from practising in a number of states as a result. And an arrest warrant is still out for him. It was on the back of these revelations he and UCT soon parted ways. But where UCT turned its back on him, the ANC would, of course, provide a warm embrace.

There was Sisulu as a fallback, and having helped Zuma through his troubles to become South African president, he was always going to be taken care of. As defence minister Sisulu appointed Ngobeni as her special adviser in 2009, ignoring his record in the US and, just like Zuma, rewarding and protecting the ethically and morally compromised.

She was harassed about Ngobeni’s status at every turn by the DA’s David Maynier, least of all for an explanation as to how Ngobeni cleared his state security vetting.

"Paul Ngobeni is a brilliant legal brain and I have no reason to question his integrity," she said in February 2010. In March the same year she said: "Special Adviser Dr Paul Ngobeni is not a fugitive from the law."

She is a past master, just like Zuma, of using 'the best interests of the ANC' as a euphemism for Zuma’s interests

And so it went. Just like Zuma she would demonstrate absolute disregard for what was right in the face of what was clearly expedient.

After a request for an investigation, in February 2012, then public protector Thuli Madonsela released the report, entitled Fugitive or Not: Report of an Investigation into the Irregular Appointment of the Special Adviser to the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans.

No surprises for guessing what it found: "Paul Ngobeni is a fugitive from justice in the United States of America." He resigned, however, entirely of his own volition shortly before the report’s release.

The parallels with Zuma’s own universe and those he keeps close are remarkable.

Seepe got a job, too, also in the department of defence under Sisulu, as an adviser. Everyone was taken care of. Even Willem Heath, although in a different department, Justice, got a job as an adviser.

All of this is worth bearing in mind when Sisulu says she will do whatever it takes to make sure "the best interests of the ANC prevail". She is a past master, just like Zuma, of using "the best interests of the ANC" as a euphemism for Zuma’s interests and of feigning some kind of moral conviction, when, truth be told, she is perfectly happy to suspend it, if it helps one of Zuma’s inner circle.

Taken at face value, as a reference only to the idea of an amnesty, Sisulu’s remark is no less disturbing. Indeed, the idea of an amnesty is itself worrisome. For it is a political invention and thus can only ever come from inside the ANC. No political party can guarantee an amnesty because they are neither state nor Constitution.

Regardless of what the ANC decides, the rule of law and due process where they relate to Zuma continue regardless. Thank goodness for that and they exist independently of the ANC. Only someone oozing the kind of self-righteous arrogance of Sisulu’s brand could assume the two are in any way related, and that what is good for the ANC is by default good for SA. Nonsense.

It is difficult to determine the degree to which the ANC committee Sisulu was so involved in influenced the National Prosecution Authority’s (NPA’s) decision to withdraw the charges against Zuma, but when the facts are set out, as the City Press did at the weekend, they certainly suggest some relationship.

"A 10-member national working committee — led by Sisulu — was tasked with advising the ANC on the possibility of then newly elected party president Zuma being jailed on 783 charges of fraud, corruption, racketeering and money laundering. The committee submitted to the NPA that charging Zuma would not be in the best interests of the country. The charges were later dropped — eight years into the case and two weeks before the 2009 general elections."

Whether by coincidence or design, Sisulu got the outcome she wanted. She helped to protect Zuma from accountability. Now she wishes not only to entertain the idea of an amnesty, but also to feign that she is in some way the right person to restore the ANC’s moral integrity.

You have to admire the degree to which hypocrisy and arrogance combine among so many in the ANC elite. They produce something new, a kind of self-assured stupidity, as dangerous as it is poisonous.

Sisulu says one of her campaign values is, "Open to modern means and methods. A movement to save the republic and reunite all of us", but then says that what is really needed is a return to SA as envisioned in the Freedom Charter. Nothing really means anything in the ANC these days. Words exist separate from their meaning. If it is modernity she is interested in, it is the Constitution she should be embracing.

Lindiwe Sisulu has built a career out of that kind of detachment, and her relationship with Jacob Zuma, convenient until it was inconvenient, speaks directly to her duplicitous character.

"What we must do is to cleanse the ANC and recover its original values," she says.

The only problem with that is that if she is serious about it the most powerful contribution she could make to the cause would be her own resignation. But then that would be to admit she more sickness than cure.