Accountability is a cornerstone of our fine constitution, which is replete with mechanisms to ensure that public officials, both elected and employed in the public service and in state entities, deliver on what they are paid to do.
Lately there has been a deluge of instances in which public officials have been called to account. The results, though, have been less than edifying, even if they provide day-time TV viewers with more than the soap operas and telenovelas they've been accustomed to up to now.
Turn on the TV and there's Eskom's head of generation and former acting CEO Matshela Koko denying he played any role in helping Gupta-linked companies secure contracts at the beleaguered power utility. Claiming to be "hurt and aggrieved", Koko said: "I have been called a thief by people I trusted, by people I still trust. I have been called a thief by [suspended Eskom legal officer] Suzanne Daniels, who I regard as an extremely competent lawyer ... People abuse these forums."Earlier, Eskom's former chief financial officer Anoj Singh got his chance to offer a full day of denials. Consider, for example, his reply to whether he had misled Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown on Eskom's contracts with McKinsey and Trillian: "I still maintain that we did not mislead in terms of the responses to the questions. The answers to the questions were accurate, based on the questions that were posed."
Singh even denied being aware that the Public Finance Management Act required him to report wasteful expenditure. And he was the boss of this area of Eskom business.
Switch channels, only to find former Gauteng health MEC Qedani Mahlangu, dressed in funereal black, attempting to appear contrite over the deaths of at least 143 psychiatric patients moved to ill-equipped NGOs while in the care of her department. Yes, she was sorry, she said, but not so sorry that she was prepared to take "personal responsibility" for the tragedy.
Mahlangu was testifying at the Life Esidimeni hearings, being led by former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke.
She complained at one point: "The questions posed to me are very difficult to me ... When I respond to questions I am instructed to use yes or no. I am not sure [with a yes or no] I will help and assist this process."
She said a politician could not answer questions with one word. "As a politician, yes or no answers, angazi [I don't know]." She said she was being asked questions "no politician in South Africa can understand". Typically, she blamed subordinates for giving her incorrect information, and rolled out the convenient politicians' excuse that it was "a collective decision"...