In the Oscar-winning movie Tsotsi, a thug and his gang terrorise ordinary people in the streets of Johannesburg. The thug (played by the recently departed actor Presley Chweneyagae in a story by Athol Fugard) and his friends steal, mug, beat, knife and hijack their way through the city heartlessly and with impunity.
One day, after shooting a woman and making off with her car, the thug Tsotsi discovers that in the heat of the hijacking and his getaway he did not realise that the woman had a baby in the back seat. The baby is crying. Like his comrades, Tsotsi is a pitiless, heartless individual. Should he throw the baby out of the car? Abandon it? Leave it by the roadside for strangers to find?
Something in him is touched by the baby’s cries. He takes the baby home. He tends to it. It is a chance for him to find his humanity again.
How do we judge Tsotsi — for his lifetime of cruelty or for his one good act of "saving" and looking after the child?
I have been thinking about this character since the death of former deputy president David “The Cat” Mabuza was announced.
How should we remember this controversial, secretive, inscrutable, yet ever-smiling man? How does one remember a political leader under whom corruption swelled in Mpumalanga, a man in whose term in office a province solidified its reputation for political assassinations and brazen theft of taxpayers’ money, and who gleefully and openly swam alongside the architects of state capture?
Mabuza was present at the beginning of the corruption that wracked Mpumalanga from 1994 and was one of the individuals who remained at the province’s centre when it was brought to its knees in the 2010s. Over 25 years of involvement in Mpumalanga politics, he was part of the rot that came to characterise a province that had potential for greatness.
Mabuza and his comrades inherited Mpumalanga from three corrupt administrations: the KaNgwane and KwaNdebele Bantustans, and the immensely corrupt National Party government. When I was a kid in the 1980s, the region was notorious for packing 14 people into a minibus taxi, driving them around a soccer field and handing them drivers’ licences with the injunction, “you saw what the driver did.” The passengers would then set off to work as taxi drivers. True story.
The ANC only had to better this kind of corruption. It didn’t — it co-opted such practices.
As Mpumalanga’s first post-1994 education MEC Mabuza became well-known for corruptly inflating matric pass rates for his province by 20 percentage points. After being fired by Mathews Phosa in 1998, he was rewarded with the provincial ministry of housing by Phosa’s hapless successor Ndaweni Mahlangu in 1999.
As Mpumalanga’s first post-1994 education MEC Mabuza became well-known for corruptly inflating matric pass rates for his province by 20 percentage points. After being fired by Mathews Phosa in 1998, he was rewarded with the provincial ministry of housing by Phosa’s hapless successor Ndaweni Mahlangu in 1999.
In 2009 Mabuza became a real power broker. He led the ANC in Mpumalanga and was securely installed in the premier’s office. From there, scandals emerged of millions in cash allegedly stolen from his house (not an unheard of event in the ANC, as we were to learn from the Phala Phala scandal), of lucrative state tenders won by friends of the premier and of the ANC, and of the premier’s close association with the Gupta family that was masterminding the state capture project in South Africa.
Mabuza was a member of the so-called “Premier League”, the coterie of leaders of Mpumalanga, the North West and Free State who were putting resources behind the continuance in power of president Jacob Zuma and his supporters. At this time Mabuza seems to have dabbled in the peculiar form of number-crunching that he had done in the 1990s as education MEC: Mpumalanga’s ANC membership grew in leaps and bounds, propelling the region to second in the ANC’s membership charts behind KwaZulu-Natal. That meant Mabuza became a powerhouse in the ANC’s leadership elections.
This is where Mabuza’s legacy becomes complicated. By 2017 he was fully a Zuma collaborator, happy with the man who had given the Gupta family free rein over South Africa to the extent that they could fire directors-general at places like the GCIS and appoint ministers such as Des van Rooyen at the National Treasury. The family had flown Mabuza to Russia for medical attention in 2015.
Mabuza was expected to ensure that Mpumalanga voted for Zuma’s proxy, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, at the ANC conference in December 2017. At the last minute, he switched his province’s votes to Cyril Ramaphosa. The Zuma faction lost.
With this one act, Mabuza brought the state capture project to a grinding halt. The man who had been part of the ANC’s scandals for 23 years had a moment, just one, in which he turned his back on the grand theft of the previous 10 years.
He had his Tsotsi moment, his brief but massively significant act of clarity. What shall we remember him for: a single clear act of integrity, or a lifetime of scandal and moral cowardice?
How do we all want to be remembered?
For opinion and analysis consideration, email opinions@timeslive.co.za
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.