TOM EATON | If Tokyo Sexwale is writing lovely things about you, joke’s on you

The press has lost some of its lustre in recent decades, and on the weekend, as I read Tokyo Sexwale wax lyrical in a Sunday Times op-ed, declaring that Cyril Ramaphosa and Paul Mashatile could form a “dynamic duo” that might rival Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, I understood why someone might have the urge to crumple up a newspaper and fling it across the room.

I also understand why comments below the line and on social media tended towards outrage, asking why such a patently one-eyed and half-brained display of Ramaphilia had been published at all, with a few implying the Times had briefly become a stooge disseminating ANC propaganda.

With respect to those angry readers and their frustrations, however, I would like to reassure them this was definitely not the case. On the contrary, Sexwale’s essay was one of the most damning indictments of Ramaphosa, Mashatile and the ANC the Sunday Times has ever published.

Let me explain.

Two years ago, Sexwale arranged a press conference to tell the country and the world the Illuminati had socked away $600-trillion in cash, or about 25 avocados from Woolies, of which $3-trillion was sitting in a Standard Bank account in South Africa, ready to be used to magically end all poverty and suffering in the country.

This fund, Sexwale announced publicly, was called the White Spiritual Boy Trust, and was well known to various senior ANC leaders, including the “dynamic duo” he’s punting now. But, explained Sexwale, about R1-trillion of the secret stash had been stolen and he had “documents” to prove it.

Of course, the whole thing was quickly revealed to be nothing more than a fringe internet conspiracy theory, but it was the end of the myth of Sexwale as a shrewd and canny power player.

Of course, the whole thing was quickly revealed to be nothing more than a fringe internet conspiracy theory, but it was the end of the myth of Sexwale as a shrewd and canny power player. Anyone can saturate themselves in online conspiracy and detach from reality, but to call a press conference to broadcast that detachment suggests you are someone with such poor judgment you shouldn’t be trusted with anything, least of all access to the internet.

In other words, if Tokyo Sexwale is writing lovely things about you, you know you’re a joke.

Not that anyone’s laughing, of course. My inner satirist wants to giggle when Sexwale insists that “the strengths of the two men can complement each other very well”, but given that Ramaphosa is essentially a creme caramel slowly collapsing under his own weight and Mashatile’s only apparent talent is being somewhere else when stuff gets stolen or broken, I can only assume that Sexwale is having another public hallucination-cum-humiliation, which is much less funny than it is sad.

Yes, it’s easy to become cynical and start doubting everything you read.