I don’t want to be overly critical of hardworking journalists, but News24’s insistence that Lindiwe Sisulu is facing an “embarrassing plagiarism claim” is simply not true: if Sisulu and her spokespuppets are not embarrassed by her government tolerating and sometimes enabling the theft of billions of rand, I can guarantee you they are not embarrassed about stealing a few hundred words.
As we all know, Sisulu shat the bed spectacularly last week, ordering one of her stable of typists to bang out an attack on the legitimacy of the judiciary in which she accused senior judges of being “House Negroes”.
It was a stunning assault on the constitution and the rule of law in SA, and most sensible people — and even some insensible ones in government — rejected her hatchet job with the contempt it deserved.
Still, speechwriters have to eat, and on Wednesday they coughed up another prose hairball, once again purported to have been written by Sisulu herself, a halfhearted attempt to walk back last week’s fiasco while simultaneously doubling down. In other words, a fairly transparent attempt keep earning her ministerial salary while telling the Zuptas she’s still super-interested in the internship at the ACME Looting Company.
On Thursday, Steven Motale, the former journalist who became Sisulu’s spokesperson in 2020, denounced the allegations of plagiarism as 'stupid' and 'ridiculous', insisting: 'Minister Sisulu cited the author, the source of the specific piece and date of publication.' She didn’t.
The trouble was, there’s this magic box called “the internet”, and when you combine it with the RET’s biggest enemy — people who can read — those people start finding curious things. Like, for example, the fact that Sisulu’s typing pool copied and pasted a large chunk from a speech given in 2013 by then attorney-general of England and Wales Dominic Grieve.
On Thursday, Steven Motale, the former journalist who became Sisulu’s spokesperson in 2020, denounced the allegations of plagiarism as “stupid” and “ridiculous”, insisting: “Minister Sisulu cited the author, the source of the specific piece and date of publication.”
She didn’t.
Of course, none of this matters to the RET faction, and by Thursday they’d moved on, mobbing journalist Karyn Maughan on Twitter for having the audacity to ask probing questions of their new queen.
The media, too, will move on, mainly because plagiarism is a pretty small crime next to all the others we’ve become so accustomed to in SA.
Before it does, however, I’d like to take a moment to point out one particular gem in Sisulu’s essay that was perhaps overlooked in the hubbub, but which provides some exquisite irony.
In the paragraph immediately preceding the plagiarised chunk, Sisulu has harsh words for a critic she says has confused criticism of the judiciary with an attack on the rule of law. “This,” she writes, “is the hallmark of intellectual laziness.”
Literally one line later, she becomes the embodiment of intellectual laziness.
You can’t make this stuff up. Luckily there are always British barristers you can steal it from.
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