There’s a rather unkind saying those who can, do, while those who can’t, teach. Woody Allen went one step further, suggesting those who can’t teach, teach gym. But I would like to add a third level: those who can’t teach gym, become SA’s minister of tourism.
Certainly, Lindiwe Sisulu seems to have taken failure to a level where it’s almost an art, whether it’s failing to do basics such as turning up for meetings, getting turned away from visiting corrupt family members in jail, or facing overwhelming rejection from her own party in her second stab at the presidency.
Of course, nobody believed she was ever going to make serious inroads at this month’s nominations regatta, no matter what her crew of hired yes-men whispered in her ear: the Big Phala Phala Poppa and DJ Digital Vibes were always going to pile up the nominations like a Gupta given a shopping trolley and 10 minutes inside the Treasury.
Still, it requires one to be disliked in quite a specifically intense way to garner only 66 nominations to Ramaphosa’s 2,037 and Mkhize’s 916. Even more remarkable, Sisulu managed to score almost 20% fewer nominations than the already fantastically unelectable Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
In other words, Sisulu has quietly positioned herself as the Sarah Palin of SA politics; an exhausted brand, fatally hitched to crumbling power bases, rapidly becoming famous only for losing pretty much all the time.
All of which makes her latest op-ed, published on this website and IOL this week, so mysterious.
In case you haven’t read it, the gist is this.
When she wrote her last op-ed attacking the constitution and the rule of law in SA, she claims, critics accused her of “scapegoating” or blaming her incompetence and that of the ANC on the constitution and the rule of law, which don’t allow her or the ANC to get stuck in as they might like.
If only certain pesky sections of the constitution could be amended and therefore removed as hindrances, Sisulu implies, her massive uselessness could operate to its full, tiny potential.
This, she insists, was an unfair criticism. The real reason, she says, she and the ANC haven’t done any governing for many years is because of the constitution and the rule of law, which don’t allow her or the ANC to get stuck in as they might like.
The problem, she explains, isn’t the constitution or the rule of law as they currently exist. No, the real problem, she explains, is the constitution and the rule of law as they exist.
In other words, those accusing her of trying to use the constitution to hide hermassive uselessness as a minister are wrong. On the contrary, if only certain pesky sections of the constitution could be amended and therefore removed as hindrances, she implies, her massive uselessness could operate to its full, tiny potential.
It’s all fairly confused, but at least Sisulu finishes strong.
“The rule of law is about equality,” she writes. “We are contending, as we have since the days of our struggle, with equality. Yet our country is defined by inequality. Under this context, how can it be said there is no need to rethink our legal framework so it allows us to pull our people out of poverty and deliver on equality, including equality before the law, sooner rather than later?”
Coming from an honest activist, this would sound like an entirely reasonable question. Even those in the political middle, while debating the specifics, would agree constitutions are amended as the needs and beliefs of societies change.
Where most would draw the line, however, is at Sisulu and her ilk being the ones making the amendments.
People who were ministers while state capture was happening, and who loyally served the president who enabled it, and who tried to discredit Thuli Madonsela’s report on Nkandla before it was published, and who appointed a convicted fraudster to a defence committee, don’t get to lecture anyone on the failings of the constitution or the rule of law.
Instead, they keep their head down, try not to cock up SA’s tourist industry even more, and thank all the gods of injustice and unabashed greed they are going to get paid a fat ministerial pension for the rest of their lives, despite the cynical destruction they’ve wrought on the country.
What I still don’t understand, however, is why Sisulu circulated this piece now.
A month ago, it would have been a logical bit of lobbying, some revolutionary cosplay for the undecided RET stooges. So now her career is dead, who was it for?
Was it an attempt to float her CV in case Mkhize pulls off a miraculous win and needs a shitty minister of tourism? Did she tell her speechwriters to bang it out and circulate it a fortnight ago, and they’re as bad at their jobs as she is at hers? Was she sitting alone in the dark in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, tormented by those 66 nominations, and just decided to email it anyway, to give her another 10 minutes in the public eye?
It's a complete mystery. Then again so is her continued employment. So perhaps let’s call it a draw and hurry past the whole sordid little scene, trying not to stare.
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