We have become used to seeing our political leaders arrive at ceremonies in rural villages, go on stage and quote Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their speeches. There is a quote, attributed to communist leader Vladimir Lenin, that they should try: “Show me who your friends are and I will tell you what you are”.
Last week we saw more “leaders” visiting Jacob Zuma. If the former president was a man who cared about his reputation he would not be plastering social media with pictures of these visitors. Many are the type who enter a respectable house through the back door, face shrouded, so as not to be seen by the community. They are nothing to be proud of unless you are similar to them.
On Friday Olly Mlamleli, an ANC Free State provincial executive committee member, appeared at Zuma’s house in Nkandla with bags of vegetables. She was donating the food to the former president so he could feed the long line of visitors who, after EFF leader Julius Malema’s visit there more than a month ago, have been flowing to his house, named Kwadakwadunuse (literally meaning “get so sloshed that you show your bum”), for “tea”.
Mlamleli has a colourful history. She was ousted from the mayorship of Mangaung by opposition parties, with the help of ANC councillors, during a motion of no confidence in August 2020. She is among 10 suspects, including ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule, who face charges of fraud and corruption relating to a R255m asbestos project.
Just days before Mlamleli pitched up, Dudu Myeni arrived at Kwadakwadunuse bearing groceries. Myeni gave a speech and seemed to be in high spirits, despite the state capture inquiry saying last November it would press criminal charges against her for revealing the identity of a secret witness in her testimony.
Like many of Zuma’s visitors, she is familiar with the courts, our Myeni. Last year the Pretoria high court declared her a delinquent director and barred her from holding any directorship at any entity for life after she led SAA into bankruptcy during her tenure between 2012 and 2016.
In her summation, judge Ronel Tolmay said Myeni “was a director gone rogue” and “is not a fit and proper person to be appointed as a director of any company, let alone a state-owned entity”.
It seems tainted leaders have heard there is some sort of cleansing mixture in visiting Zuma’s taxpayer-funded countryside lair. Politicians suspected of being in trouble with the law seem to suddenly feel an urge to beat a path to his door. On Friday Hlaudi Motsoeneng, the COO of the SABC during the Zuma years, popped into Nkandla. Zuma put on a special clean shirt for him, resting the floral one Twitter users have come to expect.
Six weeks ago the high court in Johannesburg ruled that Motsoeneng should pay back more than R850,000, used to pay for his private legal fees during his time at the corporation. The court found Motsoeneng unlawfully procured payment of legal fees by the SABC, even though the legal services were incurred in his personal capacity. He was also ordered to pay the costs of the interlocutory application and those of the default judgment.
Alongside Myeni on her Nkandla visit on February 27 was the ANC’s deputy secretary-general, Jessie Duarte. The long-standing party official, who says she is retiring from politics soon, was fresh from apologising to deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo. She had claimed in a Daily Maverick article peppered with Nelson Mandela’s name that “visits to the Gupta compound may, at times, have been innocent friends visiting each other, but now it has become an undressing of the state machinery”. In her grovelling apology to the chair of the state capture commission, she said she may have been perceived as “disrespectful” in the “article published in my name”. Published in her name? Oh, was it written by someone else?
As if these visitors are not deplorable enough, Zuma also met a seemingly xenophobic grouping called #PutSouthAfricansFirst. The former president’s daughter tweeted that the group’s founder, a Mario Khumalo, thanked Zuma “for his decisive leadership and ensuring that an African Child gets Free Education. Thanked My Father for the Love of Black People.”
Well, the group wants black Zimbabweans and Nigerians out of SA. How exactly do they thank someone for his “love of black people”?
Zuma’s visitors tell us exactly what type of people he likes to consort with and what type of person he is. What we are seeing with these Nkandla tea parties are the desperate last kicks of members of a grouping that, should they be found guilty, are going to jail for corruption.
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