"I LOVE the man that can smile in trouble," said the America philosopher Thomas Paine, "that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection".
At face value Jackson Mthembu, the newly appointed African National Congress (ANC) chief whip, would seem to be the kind of person Paine had in mind.
Mthembu is an affable and gregarious individual, but as a former ANC national spokesman, he was often the brave face of a party in much distress. He has spent a significant part of his political career defending and promoting positions that were not his own.
President Jacob Zuma was responsible for a great many of them. Along with Mac Maharaj — who polished and shined the president’s official remarks — Mthembu would provide the gloss when Zuma inevitably sparked some outrage or other as ANC leader.
It could be an inane business.
"If, indeed, the use of the word heaven in a figurative expression was deemed inappropriate by the South African society and the world at large, expressions such as ‘marriage made in heaven’, ‘heavenly voices’ and ‘sweets from heaven’ — to name a few — would not exist."
The comment was from Mthembu in response to Zuma’s February 2011 remark: "When you are carrying an ANC membership card, you are blessed. When you get up there, there are different cards used but when you have an ANC card, you will be let through to go to heaven."
It was the kind of political spin so brittle that were you to apply just an ounce of logic it would disintegrate. But then logic wasn’t his job. His job was to smile in trouble.
You have to sacrifice a certain amount of self-interest to be a political spokesperson. It’s all about the cause. The party and its leadership come first, and the bulwark between them and public perception is often the reputation of the spokesperson. Mthembu has offered up his own more often than one can count.
The price for that kind of blind loyalty can be steep.
"Do you have any scientific evidence that he is a homophobe?" Mthembu would ask reporters after Jon Qwelane was appointed the country’s ambassador to Uganda in January 2010.
Among other things, before his appointment, Qwelane had written a column titled, Call me names but gay is not okay, which had rightly prompted much outrage.
"Otherwise at this rate," Qwelane had bemoaned about same-sex marriage, "how soon before some idiot demands to ‘marry’ an animal, and that this Constitution ‘allows’ it?"
In 2011 the Equality Court found the column constituted hate speech and imposed a R100,000 fine on Qwelane. Where proof, scientific and otherwise, is not in short supply you run the risk of looking a fool.
But that, too, is not a spokesperson’s concern. Their job is to put on a brave face, "to gather strength from distress", and Mthembu pulled it off with aplomb.
It is a sign of a spokesperson’s effectiveness if, after the battle, no scars remain. Mthembu’s reputation has held up remarkably well, given the kinds of things he was forced to defend and the vacuous nature of those defences he proffered at the time.
But it was not always that way. He was, in the more distant past, briefly responsible for explaining himself as opposed to others.
As the MEC for transport in Mpumalanga in the late 1990s he left behind an ambiguous record. The department was dogged by relentless scandal, as was the province. In transport specifically, fake driver’s licences and the abuse of government vehicles by state officials often dominated the headlines. Mthembu was not afraid to draw a line in the sand.
"Government and the taxpayer pay for this incredible waste of resources," Mthembu said in October 1998, "In addition to the theft and accidents, we lose at least R2m per month to petrol fraud. It’s unacceptable and unless there is a dramatic change by the end of the year, we will have to scrap the entire fleet."
Today, in an age of ostensible austerity, you don’t see that kind of conviction or honesty for love nor money. Perhaps if he hadn’t resigned it all to represent others, he would have had more opportunities to call a spade a spade on his own terms.
He wasn’t immune to profligacy himself. As MEC he splashed out on 10 BMW 528s for the Mpumalanga executive at a cost of R2.3m — the original "cargate". His defence was more typical of the ANC today: "I am a leader in my community and therefore have a certain status — you can’t therefore be saying I should drive a 1600 vehicle."
To be a spokesperson on some level you have to have some sympathy for those impulses that underpin the actions of those you fight for. That kind of sentiment would have been much appreciated by Zuma, who’s own delicate sense of self-worth requires gargantuan indulgences when it comes to cars, homes and VIP protection, in order for it to be sublimated.
Mthembu didn’t suffer fools, at least not as MEC. In February 2000, shortly after his reign, it emerged a raft of documentation on corrupt traffic officials had mysteriously vanished.
"Why am I being asked about operational issues?" Mthembu pleaded with the press. "These things should be answered by my former department head, who is not very bright.
"He is actually the stupidest man I have ever worked with. I cannot help it if he did not do what he should have."
True or not, it doesn’t get franker than that. What a shame that, as spokesperson, he was reduced to playing word games with "figures of speech". It makes one wonder what he really thought.
In and between there were scandals of a sort.
Of them, a drunk driving conviction in 2010 stands out as the biggest blight on his public reputation. But the service he offered the ANC and the president stood him in good stead.
When The Spear (Brett Murray’s painting of Jacob Zuma, phallus exposed) sent the ANC’s faithful into apoplexy it was Mthembu who lead the call for a boycott of the City Press newspaper after it posted a photo of the painting online.
"The City Press has, therefore, become a paragon of immorality, abuse and perpetrator of injustice and slander," he raved in a vitriolic statement typical of the hysteria the ANC had artificially generated at the time. Not his finest moment.
So much sacrifice for his leader.
When Zuma claimed in January 2013 that everything a businessperson touches "will multiply" if he or she supports the ANC, Mthembu was again on the front line, fighting back the hordes. "It is our tradition as Africans that if someone gives you something, in return you thank him or her and wish them prosperity and abundance," he said.
In October 2013, Zuma told delegates to the ANC’s Gauteng manifesto launch, "We can’t think like Africans in Africa generally. We are in Johannesburg. This is Johannesburg. It is not some national road in Malawi. No."
Again, Zuma’s rhetorical bodyguard was deployed: "The ANC places it on record that both the organisation and the president hold the people of Malawi and elsewhere on the continent in high regard," Mthembu said.
It was thankless stuff too. A week or so later, Maharaj apologised on behalf of the Presidency. So much of Mthembu’s blood was needlessly spilt.
He was rewarded in 2014, in a way, with the chairmanship of the portfolio committee on environmental affairs. It’s the kind of reward you give to a person with low expectations, certainly when you consider the size of the patronage Zuma’s bloated executive represented.
But these days even beggars can be choosers it would seem. Over the past five years, senior ANC members have been abandoning the Good Ship Zuma at such a rate its leadership cohort now constitutes little more than a rag-tag collection of those too blind to see or who can see only themselves. When Stone Sizani resigned as chief whip, Zuma summoned his retired rhetorical bodyguard for one last tour of duty.
Rarely have his services been more needed. The ANC in Parliament has never been in more distress. In Mthembu, the party has its brave face. Or does it?
It is one thing to be a national spokesperson. The public will afford you a certain leniency in fronting for a king. But when you have to explain your own actions and those of the people you lead a different standard applies. Mthembu finds himself at the heart of a paradox — after years of defending the president, he will now have to direct oversight of his actions.
With greater power and responsibility come bigger consequences.
Thomas Paine continues: "’Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death."
What conduct will Mthembu’s conscience approve? His record suggests he is willing enough to outsource his integrity when called upon to do so.
Zuma for one will have absolute faith the symptoms of his own political Stockholm syndrome still manifests regularly enough in his faithful servant.
Still, one of Paine’s phrases jars: "Grow brave by reflection."
The mirror the ANC holds up to itself these days is not easily dwelt upon. An ugly, distorted monster stares back. And, whether by reflection or introspection, it has in turn lost the ability to self-appraise.
Has the ANC placed one of Zuma’s private guards in charge of holding him to account? Or is there in the recesses of Mthembu’s memory as a public servant the remnants of some greater loyalty that flashed so briefly as MEC to the Constitution and the South African public? Can Mthembu or the ANC even see the distinction any more? Therein lies the test.
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.