Farewell, then, to another minister of sport, another in a long list who were dropped into a post they neither understood nor much cared for. The sports ministry is the twilight zone of cabinet positions — purgatory then for cadres who need to be rewarded but not trusted with a portfolio in which they might actually do real damage or — horror — change for the better.
Zizi Kodwa, charged with corruption and out on bail, will not be missed as minister of sports, arts & culture now that he has resigned from a job he was likely to lose anyway.
The ANC calls it the “step aside policy”, which is not quite the admonition and kumquat-branch-self-flagellation of guilt it is made out to be, but another way of taking another corrupt cadre out of the limelight while paying lip-service to the fight against inherent corruption. It is the equivalent of making Helen Zille sit in the corner and face the wall.
The R1.6m in bribes and holidays Kodwa is alleged to have received from Jehan Mackay, former boss of EOH, for allegedly shifting, R460m worth of contracts to EOH for the City of Johannesburg, has come at a slightly larger cost. Resigning as a minister means he will miss out on the increase in salaries for ministers, MPs and other vote-mongers gazetted on Thursday.
“SA’s millionaire ministers are now even wealthier, with the president granting them an increase to R2.69m a year, from R2.64m” reported Businesstech.co.za on Thursday.
“Salary hikes for cabinet ministers are viewed as particularly egregious, as these millionaires also enjoy an entire spread of tax-free benefits and perks, all paid for by the SA taxpayer. This includes vehicles, homes and billions of rand spent on private VIP security — all while many of their portfolios crumble or perform poorly.”
The cookies have crumbled for Kodwa.
Those increases were backdated to April 1, the day of fools, pranks and high japes. The ANC have been playing us for fools since the day they got their hands on the fiscus. The dream of freedom was to eradicate poverty, transform and find a semblance of equality. What a jape.
We knew it was coming. The dream was not deferred, but destroyed . In 2004, Smuts Ngonyama, the ANC spokesperson, when asked about being involved in a Telkom BEE deal he stood to make R160m from, said: “I did not struggle to be poor”. No-one struggles to be poor, but the struggle of the poor is the difference between life and death. It does not include struggling through four birthday parties when you turn 40, as Kodwa did.
The sense of reward for those who fought the struggle to free this beautiful land should not be self-enrichment but lifting those who sleep on park benches, for whom the cycle of poverty is vicious and never ending. That is revolution.
Self-enrichment is, to use a phrase so beloved of that other former sports minister, Fikile Mbalula — or, to give him a name more appropriate, Fickle Embellishment — counter-revolutionary.
But, I digress. Back to the purgatory of the sports department. It is an echo chamber, where loud lurkers find the courage to step into a grander spotlight, making a noise so annoying and headline-grabbing that their bosses, wise to the Trump-approved way of populist politics, are left with little choice but to promote them to a bigger job — both to shut them up and tighten the leash.
Sports ministers have been heard more than seen through the years, claiming credit that was not of their making, blaming mistakes that were — indirectly, because of their clumsy fiddling, and, all the time, making noise and nuisance instead of building and fixing.
Many cracks have been covered with sticky-tape rather than digging through the cracks to the foundations of what is wrong and, it must be said, what is very right about SA sport.
There is much that is right. Use that as a starting point and reverse-engineer a way of creating true transformation. Enrich a generation of athletes kicking balls in fields of sand and running on roads of dust: that is the job of a sports minister.
SA has by my count, which may be slightly out, had eight ministers of sport. The first in the democratic SA, was Steve Tshwete. He was many things: a lovable, stubborn soldier, an exile, a prisoner, and an overly emotional politician who did not seek the limelight, but would speak if asked.
In his biography of Ali Bacher, Rodney Hartman wrote that Tshwete’s strength was “bringing sworn enemies to the negotiating table and sending them away as allies ... he went from one sporting code to the next and fixed the potholes on their roads to unity”.
Now one of the sworn enemies of unity is out on bail. The sports ministry awaits the next entrant to purgatory.
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