Few things are funnier to watch than the security detail of a small-town mayor trying to behave like the US Secret Service. They play dress-up in dark suits and sunglasses and strut about with earphones in place, pretending to receive hot intel.
Their principal is usually an ordinary citizen suddenly foisted into the high life, now driven around in a top-of-the-range SUV with tinted windows.
Something truly strange happens to people when they are elected to political office. They assume an inexplicable sense of self-importance, such that they can no longer open doors themselves or interact with other people due to some imagined security threat.
A few years ago, a newly appointed minister refused to walk onto eNCA’s set at a conference until his bodyguards were able to check under the chairs for explosives. A live broadcast had to be postponed until the security sweep took place — as if the interview was taking place in Damascus, not Durban.
Prior to being appointed to the cabinet, this same person would spend hours in pubs and restaurants without any heed to who was witnessing his liver being decimated.
In our country, ministers, deputy ministers, premiers and MECs graduate from being government functionaries to celebrities surrounded by an entourage of flunkies. They suddenly become A-listers and fashion icons, and get accustomed to the elevated lifestyle they project on social media. They feel entitled to dash around in blue-light brigades and literally feed off the state.
In our country, ministers, deputy ministers, premiers and MECs graduate from being government functionaries to celebrities surrounded by an entourage of flunkies
One of the ways the Guptas captured the state was by nursing the egos of political players and their family members, showering them with expensive gifts and money so that they could live above their means.
The leaked Gupta e-mails revealed how the family coddled Duduzane Zuma, making him a billionaire, indulging him with expensive cars and mopping up his messes, in exchange for him acting as a middleman to link them up with people in his father’s government.
They did the same with Ace Magashule’s son. It was not as if the Guptas gave the offspring of politicians career breaks so they could earn an honest living. The Guptas bought their name, their loyalty and their proximity to power.
The Bosasa patronage network operated on the same formula, as do the hundreds of corruption syndicates plugged into municipalities and provinces countrywide.
Some politicians want to live above their means and are therefore amenable to corruption.
The exercise by the Daily Maverick last week to scour the trash of an upmarket Cape Town guesthouse was aimed at exposing the hypocrisy of the EFF leadership, which claims to represent the interests of the poor. Through empty liquor bottles, shopping receipts and used condoms, journalist Marianne Thamm sought to piece together the EFF’s indulgences at the villa in Camps Bay.
Through flight ticket stubs, she was able to place at least one EFF leader, Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, at the guesthouse.
The story prompted robust debate about invasion of privacy and whether the inventory of rubbish after an eight-day stay at the guesthouse is a reasonable way to shine the spotlight on the EFF’s duplicity.
Leaders of the EFF are obviously subject to scrutiny as elected representatives, and have to declare additional means of income. How they choose to spend the money they earn, however, is not our business. There was no suggestion that the champagne and clothing were purchased with ill-gotten gains.
A week in Cape Town also hardly reflects any person’s lifestyle. The week of the state of the nation address was the first time MPs were getting together again after the election period, and there were excesses all over the city. It is doubtful that anybody’s trash would have reflected well on them.
However, to deal with the infestation of corruption in politics, there must be a rigorous method to check whether elected representatives are on the take.
That method is lifestyle audits.
Since 2016, the ANC has promised to introduce lifestyle audits for ministers, government officials and leaders of public enterprises. President Cyril Ramaphosa pledged in 2018 that everyone in the government, including himself, would undergo them.
It is unclear when the audits will begin, but it cannot be a minute too soon. It will hopefully extend to all MPs.
It is well-known some people are using their positions to access additional sources of income, including through crooked contracts and by using family members as fronts.
Lifestyle audits should be able to pierce the barriers of deception so that politicians who are involved in corruption are exposed.
It is about time public representatives are put under scrutiny to ensure they live within their means and stop seeing political office as a ticket to wealth and status.
The narcissism in politics is not only revolting but also a key element of state capture and corruption. Let’s put a stop to it.
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