I was torn between writing about the perfidious Emma Powell — the DA’s erstwhile international relations & co-operation spokesperson, and her lobbying against the government while her leader ostensibly supports the efforts of the government of national unity (GNU) to rescue us from the tariff wars and misguided perceptions and associated actions of the US president in respect of a “white farmer genocide” and our “bigly bad” views on human rights — and my cousin once-removed, Firoz Cachalia, who has recently been appointed acting police minister.
But, lest I be accused of focusing disproportionately on the foibles of the DA, allow me to comment on matters of safety and security instead. When the Firoz announcement was made and I was asked for comment, I referred the journalist to his previous experience as a member of the provincial executive committee for safety and security, his academic understanding of the law, his activity in various ANC anticorruption outfits, and his magnum opus on corruption in the law, as equipping him adequately for the task in hand.
While this is necessary, it is hardly sufficient. The sufficiency resides in the nature of the beast he is entering; his mandate and specific degrees of freedom to achieve his task. We have scant visibility of any such mandate nor any latitude he has for action and implementation. What we do know is that the ANC is pretty much irretrievably and systemically corrupt and that the chronic corruption of the police — from top to bottom — sits at the apex of a pyramid of graft.
Without the freedom to prosecute and clean up, regardless of where the offenders sit in the complex web of dishonesty, the task is Sisyphean and to prevent the metaphorical boulder from rolling back down, the party would have to cannibalise itself. Clearly that will not happen.
A comparison with Shamila Batohi — the director of public prosecutions — who was singularly unable to prosecute those fingered in the Zondo commission, may well be in order: I have to believe that her hands were tied.
So whither Firoz? He is a dyed-in the-wool ANC man who firmly (and sincerely) believes that the rot in the organisation — which he acknowledges — can be stemmed and the party reset. A noble, if blind perspective. Will his hands be similarly tied?
The jury is out on this one, but it is packed with ANC acolytes and, to expect a tabula rasa, a cleanup of the rotten top tier, is slightly more than wishful thinking — which brings us back to the agenda: what is Firoz mandated by the president to do?
Is the sole purpose to mediate and solve the uncomfortable impasse between the embattled erstwhile minister, Senzo Mchunu, and the somewhat theatrical whistle-blower, Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi? If so, he is unwittingly being inveigled into a spat between the MK and Ramaphosa factions in the ANC — hardly an enviable place to be.
He previously parted ways with the government after a refusal to sign off on a scheme of Paul Mashatile’s when in the Gauteng legislature — in charge of finance. Now, he appears to be caught between a rock and a hard place — between the president and the deputy president.
I would have hoped he would have taken some time to consider his response to his putative appointment — between the end of the Wimbledon men’s final, and wider consultation and reflection on the implications and terms of appointment. I fear he was somewhat railroaded.
I wish him well. I fear though that good wishes will not suffice. To paraphrase Robert Frost, the rot “is dusky dark and deep, and we have miles to go before we sleep”.
• Cachalia is a former DA MP and public enterprises spokesperson.
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