As news broke that the offices of the Zondo commission had been burgled and a computer stolen, it was natural to speculate about who had committed the crime and whether they know sensitive documents are usually saved onto servers rather than engraved onto small, immovable tablets by tiny stonemasons who live inside computers.
Indeed, it seemed such a Hail Mary of a crime that some might have suspected the tangential involvement of the patron saints of losing causes, the Radical Economic Transformation (RET) faction of the ANC.
I recently read someone suggesting that the RET crowd is getting desperate. Getting? Have you seen Zooming With The Zumas on YouTube? Of course you haven’t: the third episode only got 87,000 views, and 86,942 of those were Carl Niehaus, strapped to a chair, a feeding tube up his nose, his eyelids held open with hooks.
Not that he’d mind. I’m sure it was a pleasant respite for the man who has transformed into a phishing e-mail made flesh, always one debit order away from telling you he’s a Nigerian prince who needs you to help him move 40 trillion dollars offshore.
As for the rest, they might as well be placards glued to bus stops and substations, offering magical cures to common ailments. “Bad luck? Weak election? Small faction? Just send us enough to keep the lights on at Nkandla for another month and you’ll get promotion at work, new love or at very least a 15-minute private dance from Carl.”
No, if anyone connected to the RET faction was behind the break-in, any information it might have scraped off the hard drive was much less exciting than having scored an entire computer it can now flog on Gumtree and afford proper canapés the next time Julius Malema comes round to discuss the forming of the South African Tea Party.
Of course, I don’t mean to minimise the burglary by mocking its perpetrators, whomever they may be. On Monday, deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo told the nation he and the commission would not be intimidated, and I applaud him and his courage.
Still, while the burglary was clearly sinister, it’s also important to remember Hanlon’s Razor, which urges us not to attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. And I have to say that breaking into offices to steal computers in this password-protected era feels like quite a lot of both.
If you’re still not convinced, however, consider the testimony on Monday of Thandi Modise, best remembered for her 2014 postmodern live-action remake of Animal Farm, in which she proved that some are created more equal than others by allowing some of her farm animals to starve to death while keeping her senior job in government.
On Monday, Modise admitted it had been “a pity that we had to wake up when allegations of state capture were there”. I feel you, Thandi. It’s always a pity having to wake up, especially when you’re snoozing so sweetly in the downy, consequence-free embrace of sheltered employment provided by the ANC.
Just thinking about rude awakenings can make you very grumpy and Modise seemed to lose her twinkle when testimony turned to the investigation into the naturalisation of the Guptas, as she told the commission that “we could not have known every little thing”.
While some of her harsher critics might have thought she was being evasive or trying to pass the buck, I must tell you that I support her in this. I genuinely believe Thandi Modise and many of her senior colleagues in the ANC don’t know every little thing. Or every medium-sized thing. Or, indeed, every big thing. All they know is what they need to know, which is whose ring needs kissing and that sometimes pigs fall over and stop breathing, but nobody really seems to understand why. However, as long as you’ve got a farm manager to blame, it all somehow works out in the end.
Which brings me back to the burglars and why I doubt they and their paymasters are blessed with Machiavellian brilliance. After all, if the brightest and best in our government think it sensible to present themselves as a pod of manatees snoozing in a limpid pond as the water around them is pumped out and sold as artisanal champagne by entrepreneurs from Uttar Pradesh, just how dangerous is a faction which has been outmanoeuvred by those self same manatees?
I mean, if you’ve been outfoxed and sidelined by Thandi Modise’s squad, you probably shouldn’t be trying to break into anything except the ziplock bag containing your chicken soup and a plastic spoon with no sharp edges.
Anyway, bon appetite, comrades. Just don’t spend it all at one deli.
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