Stench is overpowering with pigs in charge on our farm of horrors

The stomach-churning image of pigs eating each other in a desperate effort to survive on Thandi Modise's so-called farm of horrors seems an apt metaphor for the state of the ANC and its behaviour.

It's always something of a lazy ploy to resort to Animal Farm as a crutch at the slightest mention of beasts or buffoonery. But George Orwell's parody is inescapable here, whether one thinks of Modise's gory foray into farming or the miserable imbecility unfolding at the SABC.

Pigs are in charge. The ANC is either drunk with power or has completely taken leave of its senses.

The party and its apologists complain quite often that they are the victims of a concerted campaign to discredit them. But how does one, in good conscience, defend the actions of people such as Modise and Senzeni Zokwana, or the moronic decision to plonk a clearly unqualified sycophant at the SABC?

Where are the reasonable men and women in the organisation who can call a halt to such madness? Who will say so far and no further?

It is actions such as these, not its critics, that bring the party into disrepute. South Africa not only suffers from such bad decisions, but it becomes a laughing stock. Failed states are a consequence of bad decisions.

There's obviously something about farming that the party hierarchy can't seem to get right. A month ago, Zokwana - chairman of the South African Communist party, former National Union of Mineworkers president and newly minted agriculture minister in Jacob Zuma's cabinet - was exposed for paying his cattle herder a measly R26 a day.

A unionist underpaying his own employee is not only a delicious irony, it's mind-boggling hypocrisy. Needless to say, the SACP, like good comrades, came to his defence.

And now Modise, with her surviving pigs feeding on carcasses and drinking their own urine, tries to play victim. She is being criticised, she says, because she's a woman who's trying her hand at farming. She would regain some respect if she were to admit that her negligence led to the wholesale death and suffering of these animals.

Modise seems to be a serial offender. While premier of North West she bought herself a fancy vehicle, which seemed to go against Treasury instructions. And her CV has now been found to contain fake qualifications - in one instance from a university that doesn't exist.

These infractions don't seem to have been a bar to her progress. She has effortlessly risen to the top. She now presides over one arm of our parliament. The stench is overpowering.

Given the character and quality of people in senior government positions, the SABC decision came as no surprise. Poor people make poor decisions. The appointment of a barely literate person to head such an essential public service would under normal circumstances be a shock to the system. It would cause an uproar. But we seem to be past caring. We've developed an equanimity that shields us from unpleasant realities. It is sometimes better not to know, to stay ignorant.

The SABC is unlike any other parastatal; it is not Transnet or Eskom. It deals with the very essence of our soul, a mirror by which we project our character to the world and the world to us. It should therefore not only reflect the values of our new dispensation, but also open and alert us to new vistas and horizons. It is your best minds, erudite and broad-minded, who should be at the forefront of such an institution, informing, probing and even pricking our conscience.

What's even more sickening is that, in appointing this individual, the government has, not for the first time, pointedly ignored the public protector's findings. Instead of being sanctioned, he's rewarded with a promotion beyond his competence.

The National Party abused the SABC, but not to this extent. Even PW Botha was not this daring. The SABC is not even a government mouthpiece; it is the tool of whichever ANC faction happens to be in the ascendancy.

In trying to understand what's happening to our country, we have to go back to Polokwane in 2007. Not only did the ANC elect Zuma as its leader, it also abolished the Scorpions. That opened the sluice gates.

Corruption, symbolised by Nkandlagate, flourished. Dodgy Zuma acolytes were appointed to head key state institutions.

The SABC chairwoman, for instance, urged its journalists during the elections to vote for the ANC. She's obviously clueless about her role or that of her organisation.

The National Prosecuting Authority, the main instrument in our criminal justice system, has become a circus, a tool in the jockeying for senior positions in the government. No wonder crime is thriving.

Basking in the afterglow of the election triumph, Zuma, referring to his critics, declared: "There's nothing wrong with Nkandla; there's something wrong with them."

That accurately captures the attitude coursing through the party.