EDITORIAL: Whatever happened to Lynne Brown?
The minister, a once-respected struggle stalwart, has squandered her reputation and will find it difficult to regain it
Brown’s apparent willingness to toss away her hard-earned credibility in defence of President Jacob Zuma’s rotten shadow state is a symbol of how the ruling party itself has been perverted. She’s not the only one in this position. In parliament on Tuesday, former finance minister Pravin Gordhan expressed the question on many people’s lips when he asked: who had ordered her to reinstate Molefe? Was she simply doing Zuma’s bidding? The real question, though, was: what had happened to her? It’s an apposite question, given how Brown has come out swinging to defend the decision to reappoint Molefe as CEO. She also was trapped in a lie, telling parliament Eskom hadn’t signed any contracts with Trillian Capital Partners (a firm part-owned by an associate of the Gupta family, Salim Essa). Only, as AmaBhungane pointed out, Eskom had actually paid R266m to Trillian. But the Molefe scandal could be the death knell for her political career. By aligning herself with the wild contradictions, obvi...
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