MAKHUDU SEFARA | Was the Phala Phala report whitewashed for self gain?

Is advocate Kholeka Gcaleka a nakedly ambitious deputy public protector who, with only a few weeks before nominations for the top post opened, decided to whitewash an important report to give her career a fillip?

If you ask the EFF leaders, Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu, their answers might leave you feeling you asked a stupid question (and don’t be deceived, stupid questions exist. We can’t have stupidity around us without stupid questions! Let’s park this here.)

Malema told us last week: “The tactics to bury the Phala Phala report, most recently by an ambitious public protector who seeks to piggyback her way into the office, will not work. The EFF will never allow careerism to undermine the fight against corruption.”

The real question is whether becoming the PP is such a big deal for the deputy to the point she would jettison her values, ethics and principles to appease the appointing authority against whom she was called upon to write an important report which had the potential to remove him from office — but which potential was likely to be quashed, anyway, through majoritarianism in parliament.

Put differently, is she the type to mortgage her career on the need to appease or scratch a political principal’s back in the hope he would scratch hers back?

In her defence, she recently said: “This report has been well thought out. I am confident this is a matter in which the public protector would not be found to have been biased or to have dealt with the matter in an unbecoming manner. The court might arrive at a different decision — that is really up to the court, but we are confident we have done the best we could in line with the law.” It’s almost the same script Mkhwebane shared before losing countless other cases and then feigning surprise before proclaiming a need for an appeal.

Is Gcaleka’s failure to find wrong against a president who keeps dollars in sofas, whose farm conducts business which she says does not constitute a financial interest for him, telling of who she is?

There are many layers to this matter. First, some of those who oppose Gcaleka, like the EFF leaders, also publicly support outgoing public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, which muddies how the public receives their criticism of the former. Is it gerrymandering influenced by politics? Or is it genuine concern that Gcaleka’s ambitions are getting the better of her.

After many years of practising law, was the Phala Phala saga, the one matter before her that, perhaps more than any other, tells us all we need to know about her? Or, as philosophers say, sometimes what is said tells us more about who says it than it does about the thing spoken of. Is Gcaleka’s failure to find wrong against a president who keeps dollars in sofas, whose farm conducts business which she says does not constitute a financial interest for him, telling of who she is? Or is the issue the people criticising her for wanting what normal people want — career success? Or is that career being pursued regardless of justice?

But power, we must concede, humbles even brave hearts. This is why very few are able to speak truth to power genuinely. We all remember how the country was divided about the kind of questioning Ramaphosa received at the Zondo commission where he appeared as president of the ANC and, on a different occasion, former leader of government business.

Many felt this was the very leader who chaired the deployment committee of the ANC whose decisions led to many challenges we had (and still have) and should not have been treated with kid gloves by then deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo. Yet he was. And Zondo was later to be appointed chief justice at the end of the process that required Ramaphosa to put his signature to make the appointment official. And yet we expect Gcaleka to do what the chief justice could not — to get her to a position equivalent to a judge, much less of a Constitutional Court.

I find Gcaleka amiable. But I do think she whitewashed the Phala Phala report, despite her protestations to the contrary. I think she messed up — even though I don’t think she is as much of a mess as Mkhwebane.

The latter set the bar so low anyone after her will be an improvement.

Politically, this is what the country went through when former president Jacob Zuma was shown the door on Valentines Day in 2018. Ramaphosa didn’t have to do much. When he lifted a finger, people praised him. When he quoted a popular song, Thuma Mina was once more en vogue. When he walked in the parks and streets in the mornings, they said he was preparing to energise the work of government. Alas, he needs more than just walks to convince us he knows what to do with this economy, to create jobs, fight crime and restore some semblance of normality in our country.

Before the Phala Phala report, Gcaleka would have been a shoo-in. Now, she’s like a hyena with blood on her mouth but claiming innocence.

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