The Big Read: Dlamini IQ suits Zuma fine

Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini is likely to appear before the Constitutional Court this week and we will be subjected to the same mediocrity we have seen starkly displayed over the past few weeks.

Dlamini will hum and haw, she will obfuscate, she will play victim, she will pull out the race card and she will pretend to be a champion of transformation.

All this energy will be aimed at convincing us that she is actually capable of leading her ministry to deliver on its mandate. But, really, over the past year we have seen and heard enough to confirm our suspicions - that Dlamini should not have been put in the post in the first place.

The minister does not respect the law and has no idea what the constitution behoves her to do. We have an ignoramus in office.

Dlamini is not the only one. Our bloated cabinet is replete with bums-on-seats who have not a clue why they are in their big offices or even why they attend cabinet meetings. They think they are there to say "Yebo, Baba" when the president or his bosses - the Gupta family - issue orders.

We live in an age of mediocrity. Take Communications Minister Faith Muthambi, for example.

The ad hoc committee into the SABC recommended that "The president should exercise his constitutional duties in relation to Minister Muthambi . [the] committee agrees that President Zuma should seriously reconsider the desirability of Muthambi retaining her portfolio."

This is clear and unequivocal advice to the president - fire her. Will he? Of course he won't. Mediocrity is the glue that now holds the Zuma administration together. In this administration, mediocrity bubbles up to the top like poo in a dirty well.

No one gets fired here. Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula smuggled a family friend into the country and nothing happened to her. State Security Minister David Mahlobo consorted with rhino poachers and not even an inquiry is held or serious questions asked. Instead, he gets to tell us that social media might be regulated while peddling conspiracy theories without a single fact to back them up.

You have to do something really terrible - such as refuse a bribe from the Gupta family, as Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas did - to get close to being fired.

If you are the likes of Hawks head Berning Ntlemeza, National Prosecuting Authority chief Shaun Abrahams or SARS boss Tom Moyane - the three musketeers who brought sham charges against Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan last year - then you are guaranteed a job for life.

As they say in the townships, "Kumnandi eSata Afrika" (It's great in South Africa).

But back to Dlamini and the social grants. This is a scandal that is deep, wide and all-encompassing. Its tentacles reach into President Jacob Zuma's office and beyond. (Why did the president's personal legal adviser, Michael Hulley, feel the need to advise Dlamini not to seek other solutions to this issue?)

This social grants scandal reminds us of the cynicism that has seeped into the Zuma administration and many of its leaders. About 17million grants are in danger of not being paid next month to poor people who have no other recourse in life - the grant is as good as it gets for them.

Yet Dlamini and her comrades chose to gamble with the poor people's livelihoods. There is a trend here: when it comes to poor people, the Zuma administration no longer cares.

When 34 mineworkers were mown down in an hour in Marikana in 2012, the cabinet dragged its feet, refusing to visit the bereaved families. Ministers behaved in the most callous way possible.

The removal and subsequent horrific deaths of at least 94 mental patients from Life Esidimeni seems to have outraged only the ANC's Gauteng leadership. As we all saw on February 9, when National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete refused to allow a moment of silence for them at the State of the Nation sitting, this administration has forgotten how to talk to and treat poor people.

It is in this context that Dlamini's disregard for the law and her lack of care for any consequences of her actions should be seen.

So when you listen to Dlamini this week as she obfuscates and diverts attention, and perhaps even lies, remember that you are not looking at an individual. You are looking at the Zuma government and what it really represents.

It is an administration of mediocrity and failure. It is an administration that is clutching at straws - "radical economic transformation", "white monopoly capital" - because it now realises that its days are numbered.

This weekend the ANC released policy documents hoping to renew itself ahead of its December conference. With the Zuma administration in office, it is unlikely that people will believe it.