The sidelining of Zweli Mkhize has been strangely quiet. Yes, media storms require the internet, which requires electricity, and there’s precious little of that in SA at the moment. But I suspect there are reasons beyond the arrival on Wednesday of stage 4 deindustrialisation.
Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to put Mkhize on “special leave”, for one, will have poured oil on troubled waters, giving Mkhize’s critics a win, while allowing his supporters to console themselves with the fact that “special leave” in the ANC is very special indeed, with money, perks, patronage and sycophancy usually continuing more or less unabated.
There’s also the indisputable fact that Mkhize had a lot of fans, or at least people who thought he was a fairly spectacular health minister compared to, say, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
I was one of these people: early on in the Covid crisis, I wrote admiringly of Mkhize’s calm demeanour and apparent competence, and once the state started banning hot chickens and criminalising walking on the beach while it merrily opened mega-churches, I told myself that these fantastically stupid decisions were being made despite Mkhize’s input.
Special leave in the ANC is very special indeed, with money, perks, patronage and sycophancy usually continuing more or less unabated.
For those of us who hoped he was different, his fall is demoralising rather than invigorating. Instead of schadenfreude, I feel simply the renewed gloom that comes when tiny sparks of hope have been snuffed out by the rivers of saliva spilling out of the trough that is national government.
Finally, I imagine there’s a certain amount of anxiety about his temporary replacement, Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane.
I can empathise. Replacing a medical doctor with the minister of tourism during a pandemic feels a bit like treating a broken arm with a homeopathic tincture of dissolved credulity, especially when this particular tincture most recently made headlines by arranging a “ministerial cook off” with “media personality” Somizi Mhlongo to punt her budget speech. (The event was a massive success, if her goal was to draw attention to herself, Mhlongo, her understanding of what “tourism” means, and the quality of the advisers who told her that this was a good idea.)
We can, however, reassure ourselves with the fact that Kubayi-Ngubane knows a lot about triage. Indeed, since 2017 she has been minister of energy, communications, and science and technology before going into the tourism portfolio. In other words, she has been a political Band-Aid for half a decade. So there’s that.
Besides, at worst she is a temporary fix. But it does raise the question of who, exactly, will be health minister once the rumoured cabinet shuffle happens, with Ramaphosa writing the same 10 names as always onto scraps of paper, throwing them into the shuffle barrel, and then reaching far down, right to the very bottom of the barrel to pick one.
A small part of me wants this all to tip over into pure surrealism, and for this government to fully commit to the clown show it’s been flirting with for years by appointing someone like Fikile Mbalula or Blade Nzimande.
The front-runner, however, is surely Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, ready to bring her brand of finger-wagging paternalism to the portfolio. At least the playwrights will be jazzed.
On second thoughts: come back, Zweli. All is forgiven ...
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