Most politicians facing a crisis spend a lot of time fighting the past instead of preparing for a future. In the end they destroy a bridge to the future. Thembisile Simelane is the most recent example of this.
Politicians seem to be borrowing a lyric from the late Chicago singer-songwriter and advertising copywriter Oscar Brown Jnr’s tune Hum Drum Blues. Part of the lyric goes: “Fightin’ the future and mad at the past!”
When faced with a crisis such as Simelane’s, one’s priority shouldn’t be about being mad at one’s past (the reputation about to be destroyed) and therefore fighting the future. It should be about preparing for the future. This often means apologising for what led to the crisis and, where appropriate, resigning from public office.
But this is counterintuitive. And even when the person facing a crisis is advised to focus on his or her future instead of the past, they find it difficult to accept the advice. Their instinct and ego — nurtured by bad advice from “communications experts” — is to defend their reputation.
A reputation is nothing but a collection of perceptions about one’s past, but it can be dangerous , as captured in the words Juba (a character in the movie Gladiator) said to Maximus: “You have a great name. You must kill your name before he kills you.”
Simelane’s case is a classic example. When she was the mayor of Polokwane, Simelane, who as fate would have it is now justice & constitutional development minister, borrowed money from Gundo Wealth Solutions, whose owner, Ralliom Razwinane, is one of the accused in the fraud case arising from the collapse of VBS Mutual Bank.
Gundo coaxed municipalities, mostly in Limpopo and including Polokwane during Simelane’s mayoral tenure, to place funds with VBS. But municipalities are forbidden in terms of the Municipal Finance Management Act from placing money with mutual banks, and the leadership of the Polokwane municipality ought to have known this.
The second transgression on Simelane’s part was getting a “loan” from a company that was doing business with the institution she was heading. At best this would give rise to a conflict of interest, but what makes it worse is that the very basis of Polokwane’s dealings with Gundo was unlawful.
Then there is the issue of whether the original intent was to give her a loan, and whether she understood or accepted it to be a loan. It has been alleged that her loan agreement was entered into several years after she received the payment from Gundo.
This is the quagmire Simelane is in. Every time she defends herself she risks new information coming out about the coffee shop loan. Her best way out would have been to apologise early in the crisis for what happened during her tenure as mayor of Polokwane. Given her position as justice minister a resignation would have been in order too.
Apologies serve a purpose. Writing back in 1971 in Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order, American sociologist Erving Goffman described an apology as “a gesture through which an individual splits himself into two parts, the part that is guilty of an offence and the part that dissociates itself from the delict and affirms a belief in the offended rule”.
To which two other sociologists, Roman David and Pui Chuen Tam, have added: “Apology signifies a change in an offender’s behaviour, which goes hand in hand with a change in the offender’s perception and rehumanisation, paving the way for empathy and reconciliation.”
An apology is therefore key to an individual’s success in laying foundations for a future. The focus on defending one’s reputation (a perception about one’s past), destroys those foundations.
That’s what Simelane should decide, however late in the day it may be. Is she going to go down fighting to protect her name — the perception of her past — or is she going to prepare for a future?
The latter demands that she show the public several things, all to do with splitting herself into two. The part that is guilty of what in the generosity of spirit we can call “bad judgment” on her part, and the one that has seen the light of her wrongdoing.
First, that’s the understanding and acknowledgment that her dealings with Gundo were wrong. Second, that she’s changed. Had she moved swiftly, an apology might have earned public empathy. But her anger with the past may have cost her dearly.
• Sikhakhane, a former spokesperson for the finance minister, National Treasury and SA Reserve Bank, is editor of The Conversation Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.
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