SHARING THE INSULT
Disgust at Zuma also pains the innocent
Shame is a difficult weapon to have in one’s armoury, writes Jonny Steinberg
The costs to SA of Jacob Zuma’s presidency have been counted so loudly and so often you’d think we’d left nothing out. But there is, in fact, a cost that has yet to be counted. By its nature silent, painful and very hard to talk about, it is the damage Zuma’s presidency is doing to race relations in SA. It struck me in December as I sat in the gallery at the High Court in Pretoria listening to the Helen Suzman Foundation’s case against Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko. The foundation’s complaint was that Nhleko had appointed Berning Ntlemeza head of the Hawks without adequately determining whether he was fit and proper for the job. This was a court, so the language counsel used was ever so proper, but the portrait painted of Ntlemeza made one want to wash the grime from one’s hands. By the time Nhleko considered his appointment, Ntlemeza had disgraced himself in another high court matter. He had withheld evidence and had groundlessly accused the judge in that case, Elias Matojane, ...
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