TOM EATON | Perhaps the activist was a jerk to Cele, but you know who should be upset?

Bheki Cele’s tough-guy image has long been proved to be nothing but a buffoonish disguise he wears to deflect from his supreme incompetence. But this week he couldn’t even maintain a reasonable facsimile of being an adult, throwing a proper vloer-moer and all but sticking his fingers in his ears as he screamed “Shut up! Shut up!” at an activist presenting him — and the ANC as a whole — with cold, hard facts.

After speaking to an audience in Gugulethu in Cape Town on Tuesday, Cele found himself on the receiving end of a brutally clear and concise indictment by Ian Cameron, whose Action Society group represents the families of victims of gender-based violence.

Cele, however, was having none of it. After reminding the audience that he’d been sent to Robben Island for fighting for human rights, he wagged his finger and said he would not be spoken to “like a garden boy”, causing Cameron to stand up and demand a retraction, at which point Cele wrenched the dial to 11, bellowing at Cameron to “shut up”, “sit down and listen”, and finally to “get out”. When Cameron refused on all counts, he was escorted from the venue by two uniformed officers.

Given that Cele has been heckled by gatvol communities for some time now, usually without losing it completely, it was natural to ask why things went so pear-shaped this time.

It’s possible that one of his handlers whispered in his ear that, until his resignation in 2020, Cameron had been AfriForum’s head of community safety, and part of the international roadshow in 2018 that had culminated in Donald Trump infamously tweeting a Tucker Carlson fiction about the SA government “seizing land from white farmers”, with the comment: “I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers.”

I think it’s also possible that, instead of being a genuine emotional outburst, Cele was engaging in some old-timey electioneering.

Cameron also runs a website for SA gun enthusiasts, on which you can read a supremely dishonest essay written days after the Uvalde school massacre in May, arguing against gun control in the US by comparing the umpteenth mass-shooting in that country to the Bastille Day massacre in France in 2016, when a murderer killed 86 people with his truck. (It quickly moves on to the standard “mental health” talking points, but that opening comparison well and truly sinks it, given that France would crack down on truck ownership in a heartbeat if trucks were being used to murder 20,000 citizens a year.)

In other words, it’s possible Cele knows who Cameron is and doesn’t like his politics. I myself am not a huge fan. But an explosion like that needs a better explanation than simply a difference in worldviews.

Some people tried to suggest Cameron had triggered Cele by not being “respectful” enough. One eNCA news anchor even wondered if white people should remain cognisant of our past and “edit” their language accordingly when speaking to black people, a view derided by some black Twitter pundits as a supremely condescending.

I think it’s also possible that, instead of being a genuine emotional outburst, Cele was engaging in some old-timey electioneering. Gugulethu is an ANC stronghold in Cape Town. Cameron, a white man with an Afrikaans accent and a fairly pugnacious look, was, at least in theory, a perfect villain to be bellowed at and evicted.

In practice, however, what many of those worried residents saw on Tuesday was a manhelping their community, speaking facts and expressing their anger, being drowned out and banished by a politician who has done nothing to improve their lives.

They heard Cele cite his imprisonment on Robben Island in 1987 as an implied justification for why he shouldn’t be questioned about the job he’s doing in 2022.

And then they saw yet another perfect example of the ANC refusing to listen.

I’ve read that Cameron’s tone was belligerent, even if his words were fair. I’ve read that his body language was aggressive, even though he was the one dragged out by the police. I’ve read that he gave off a vibe that wasn’t respectful, even if he was the one being accused of racism and being told to shut up.

And who knows? Maybe it’s true. Maybe Cele felt deeply offended and upset.

But you know who would give anything to feel offended and upset right now?

The 60-plus South Africans who got murdered today on Bheki Cele’s watch.