Extract
In the end, Bathabile Dlamini proved that she really does care about securing a regular income for SA’s unemployed. Well, one of them. By resigning as a member of parliament on Tuesday, she secured her ministerial pension and made sure that she enters her twilight years disgraced, derided, eventually forgotten, but very, very rich.
She is, of course, not alone. In fact, consistent to the end, she left her exit late. A number of cabinet discards have already resigned to make sure they don’t end up as mere MPs who have to do their shopping in Sandton rather than Dubai.
But she is, one could argue, the most notorious of the lot; a modern-day Madame Defarge, cheering as Jacob Zuma and his goons marched one institution after another up the steps to the guillotine. Indeed, she remains the head of the ANC Women’s League, that politburo of treacherous invertebrates that sang Umshini Wami next to Jacob Zuma when he was accused of rape.
She wasn’t captaining that particular ship of fools back in 2006, but she was clearly getting ready for higher office. That year she pleaded guilty to abusing parliamentary travel vouchers as part of the “Travelgate” scandal. Having been convicted of fraud, she was officially qualified to serve in Zuma’s government, and the rest, like her reputation, is history.
Lumka Oliphant, her beleaguered au pair, moved mountains, endlessly sponging off her face and putting her toys back in the crib; but not even a skilled spin doctor could save Dlamini, and Oliphant was not skilled. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but it can’t compete with belligerent incompetence.
By 2017 Dlamini had nudged the social grant system to the brink of collapse, although, to be fair, a few people were still getting paid. In 2018 it emerged that she had managed to spend R1m of the SA Social Security Agency’s money on private security for her family, presumably to protect them from her incompetence.
There was, however, one statement of absolute truth and transparency in her laborious, self-justifying lecture: her claim that she was an “easy target”.
It was a minor scandal by the standards of the ANC, but her defence deserves to be recorded for posterity: “Some people understand government more than others,” she growled. Admittedly, she wasn’t wrong. Some people still mistakenly believe that our government is here to serve us.
True to form, Dlamini is not going quietly. On Tuesday she released a 10-page letter explaining why she doesn’t hold any grudges, the way you ask “No hard feelings?” before head-butting the other guy.
Inevitably, the letter reveals that everyone else is to blame for the whooping, flaming, cartwheeling cluster of failure that was her career. Her colleagues, she says, engaged in “treason” for suggesting that the Post Office should distribute social grants. That must have been a particularly difficult sentence to write. Then again, most sentences are probably difficult to write when you think “treason” means “people trying to fix your cock-up”.
There was, however, one statement of absolute truth and transparency in her laborious, self-justifying lecture. Her claim that she was an “easy target”.
It’s true. She was. By the end, Dlamini was just one big bulls-eye. Because that’s what happens when you’re catastrophically bad at your job, aggressively dismissive of valid criticism, and unshakably loyal to a predatory elite that’s stripping the country.
Dlamini will be missed by writers of satire, providers of VIP security, and Oliphant, who is sort of a combination of the first two.
She will be missed by nobody else.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.