TOM EATON | The premier’s mask fell off to expose how two-faced the ANC is

On Sunday, as Mpumalanga premier Refilwe Mtsweni-Tsipane swanned about maskless at the funeral of Jackson Mthembu, a widely respected and admired man whose life had been cut far too short by Covid-19, many people got justifiably angry.

We are a nation saturated with and nauseated by the hypocrisy of the ANC, and as Mtsweni-Tsipane tried to perform a rather stiff and unconvincing two-handed salute, like a knackered Eva Peron impersonator working the end of a rain-soaked pier in an irrelevant backwater, social media began to seethe with demands that she be arrested, with many alluding to Bheki Cele’s chest-thumping claim about arresting 7,000 people for not wearing masks.

I am also tired of the hypocrisy, but in these frantic times I’ve decided to try to pause, to listen, and to try to see things from the point of view of the accused party, which in this case is a much better point of view than my own since Mtsweni-Tsipane doesn’t have a mask cluttering up her peripheral vision.

Which is why I think we should consider the explanation offered by her office, which insisted that when the premier arrived and stepped out of her gigantic black SUV like a butterfly clambering from a cocoon of money, her “mask was somehow damaged and she was oblivious of that when it fell”.

Mtsweni-Tsipane, the statement explained, “thought it was intact” as she Peroned her way down the red carpet, while aides allegedly “sought a replacement mask, which the premier utilised for the rest of the proceedings”.

Unfortunately masks are almost impossible to find nowadays, and before her aides could return, the still maskless Mtsweni-Tsipane was seen to pause in front of a policewoman and give her what was described by social media as a “hug”.

Our eyes, however, were apparently lying to us. According to the premier’s spokesperson, one Sibongile Mkani-Mpolweni, this was “not a hug; she touched her shoulder. She could have fallen had she not leaned over”.

Now this leaves us with two possibilities.

The first is that the premier’s spokesperson and her office are telling the truth, and Refilwe Mtsweni-Tsipane is so completely out of it, both mentally and physically, that she doesn’t know when a tightfitting surgical mask has fallen off her face, and that, were it not for the strong arms of nearby policewomen, she would be falling over a lot of the time for no reason whatsoever.

No sooner had the prospect of arrest been mentioned than SAPS spokespeople were explaining that not wearing a mask is only an offence if you’ve failed to comply with a verbal instruction from a police officer.

If this is the case, I really don’t think it is fair to expect Mtsweni-Tsipane to continue with her duties. She is clearly very ill, and surely needs to be relieved of the premiership immediately so she can rest and recuperate.

If it’s not the case, well, then we’re looking at the second option: that the premier’s office was peddling the sort of low-grade lies we’ve become so accustomed to over the years; the ones in which dogs ate my homework and you didn’t see what you saw and a hug was actually first aid; the ones that insist with all the guile of a toddler covered in Nutella and glitter that it’s just a misunderstanding; that it wasn’t about getting her full face in the photos and to hell with the pandemic and consequences and the health of that police officer.

So which was it? An honest explanation, revealing that Mtsweni-Tsipane is in grave danger, or a lie, revealing that she is a grave danger?

To the premier, the answer doesn’t matter. If you’re high enough in the ANC, nothing matters except the political bets you’ve placed and your position in the buttock-kissing queue.

Cynicism aside, though, it really is fantastically unlikely that Mtsweni-Tsipane will face any real consequences: no sooner had the prospect of arrest been mentioned than SAPS spokespeople were explaining that not wearing a mask is only an offence if you’ve failed to comply with a verbal instruction from a police officer, so even if the recipient of the non-hug had told her to mask up, that initial promenade down the red carpet wasn’t technically a criminal act, so really what can anyone do?

Even such legal nitpicking, however, is unnecessary, and the premier knows it. Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, patron saint of lockdown flouters, has been back at work for months and has most recently been trying to persuade people to stop burning down 5G towers because they think they spread Covid-19. Given her generous contribution towards undermining scientific consensus and the rule of law, I have to say that ironies abound ...

So no, the premier is not going to be arrested. That’s not how this works.

Still, at least Mtsweni-Tsipane has set a happy precedent: the next time the ANC’s endless hypocrisy is getting you down and you badly need a hug, just find a police officer and tell them you’re about to fall over.