The gap between intent and action is a phenomenon considered interesting by many scholars, for it helps, in part, to explain why some people self-sabotage. The Greeks called it akrasia, acting against one’s own better judgment.
Socrates once said no-one is “late” voluntarily or deliberately. Aristotle, meanwhile, noted we can know what is right but be overcome by a desire for a particular goal — be it money or any other interesting life pursuit — and then self-sabotage. But the latter connotes an intentional, or conscious, departure from an initially chosen path.
Some gaps between intentions and actions suggest a tongue running way ahead of the mind. Take Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi’s comments this week when trying to project himself as being as affected by water cuts as everyone else.
“I also experience water shortages, and in certain instances I had to go to a certain hotel so that I could bathe and go to my commitments. We also go through the same inconvenience like any other person,” Lesufi said. Go figure.
How in the world could it be a great idea to mention taking a bath in hotels? He didn’t have to. The intention behind the point he wanted to make was simply that leaders, too, are affected by the water crisis. Everyone is. He was trying to make a meal of the appeal to our hearts: we are in this new struggle together.
How in the world could it be a great idea to mention taking a bath in hotels?
But for the people of Gauteng, it’s no solution to know that Lesufi has no water or, worse, that he bathes at a hotel. The solution he and his colleagues should talk about is when the water will flow in everyone’s houses.
What he said betrayed the intent and communicated the opposite — that he is part of a privileged group that can afford to access hotels on a whim. This is the opposite of what he wanted to communicate. He has correctly apologised for, against his better judgment, outing his privileged self, but was told his apology “holds no water”.
What makes it worse is that it happened at a time when he’s asking his comrades in Gauteng to re-elect him chair of the ANC, a move that is likely to be contested by — wait for it — Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko, the Gauteng health MEC. Yes, the same Nkomo-Ralehoko who said last week that any patient sleeping on the floor in any hospital must be doing so because they so desired. Yes, it’s the same Nkomo-Ralehoko who told our reporter that the suspended health HOD Lesiba Malotana was being victimised.
“It’s a pity that it happened to be him who [was] victimised and singled out. [There were] other HODs who were high-risk, but they decided to [pull] him aside. I’m happy the premier has brought him back into the system,” Nkomo-Ralehoko told the Sunday Times.
This is in spite of the SIU finding that Malotana has received about R1.6m in cash into his bank account, with about R300,000 deposited in one day at different ATMs. Sure, it’s possible there’s something great about Malotana — but his cash handling must raise eyebrows, including those of Nkomo-Ralehoko.
Nkomo-Ralehoko hasn’t told us how alarmed she was when the SIU revealed Malotana’s shocking cash deposits
Malotana claims he sells eggs from a farm in Limpopo, but the cash deposits are made in Gauteng. At a time when the country is battling corruption, fraud and malfeasance involving senior officials, society expects Nkomo-Ralehoko to at least want the SIU to investigate Malotana and possibly clear him before she expresses a desire to have him back.
It’s worse when she says he is being targeted, almost as if to suggest that she knows, or that it’s common cause, that Gauteng HODs are cash handlers of note and that the only injustice here is that her favourite HOD is the only one singled out. What on earth is this? Nkomo-Ralehoko hasn’t told us how alarmed she was when the SIU revealed Malotana’s shocking cash deposits.
It was for this same HOD that Nkomo-Ralehoko so desperately needed that she bumped off the HOD she found at the department, Dr Nomonde Nolutshungu, promising to redeploy her somewhere else, according to legal documents. Whatever the relationship between Malotana and Nkomo-Ralehoko, it is the stuff to make people look at the ANC and say the party is not serious about fighting malfeasance.
Nkomo-Ralehoko’s preferences aren’t made obvious by Malotana’s sterling performance. Gauteng hospitals remain a mess. They’re the scarecrows used by medical aids to keep us chained to them. But it is stomach-turning that those trying to remove an erratic Lesufi could only find a hopeless, foot-in-mouth Nkomo-Ralehoko. Could it get worse than this?
It’s one thing to know the right thing to say and quite another to communicate it
One more jewel from Nkomo-Ralehoko’s mouth was her statement that journalists should not take pictures in hospitals. In her parallel universe, the hospitals are hers, not the people’s. And, to boot, it’s for her to decide where and when cameras can be used. Can you imagine a universe where all the ministers and MECs behave as though all public amenities are theirs and it’s for them to decide who can or can’t breathe in them?
The truth is that Nkomo-Ralehoko isn’t accustomed to communicating appropriately and has no discernible appreciation of the communication ecosystem. She doesn’t take communication seriously, and this is why she talks like this.
While Lesufi is a seasoned communicator, his hotel gaffe indicates advice gone awry. The advisers probably told him, as they would have all ministers dealing with the water imbroglio, to not appear unaffected. This is why even the minister in the Presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, strangely said on television that the people of Tshwane, Limpopo and Johannesburg don’t bathe because everyone is affected.
It’s one thing to know the right thing to say and quite another to communicate it. The overeagerness to appear affected has turned the government message on its head, making leaders sound stranger than fictional characters.
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