EDITORIAL: The minister who just couldn’t (give up power)

Lindiwe Sisulu has hit the campaign trail hard in recent weeks, wining and dining journalists and anyone keen to flatter her ego by discussing her “army credentials”. 

But it takes a special degree of chutzpah to attack her own boss, Cyril Ramaphosa, for his lack of effective action, when there is nobody more deeply implicated in the morass than South Africa’s longest-serving cabinet minister, who has held a post since 1994.

Last week, Sisulu called on Ramaphosa to resign, accusing him of corruption for securing the ANC presidency through “money, manipulation and misrepresentation, aided and abetted by external forces on a level not previously experienced in the ANC”.

Stirring words, but does Sisulu know that if this is indeed so, then the Prevention & Combating of Corrupt Activities Act obliges her to lay criminal charges? Without that, it’s beginning to look like no more than politicking to push her case for the ANC presidency. 

Or, put less charitably: the suspicion is that in the absence of evidence, she just made it up.

Then again, self-deception and doublespeak are clearly not something the honourable minister finds herself much without. 

Earlier this year, she penned an opinion piece in which she attacked the constitution and the judiciary, describing judges as “house n******”.

After meeting Ramaphosa, the presidency said Sisulu had apologised for and retracted her attack on the judiciary. She then showed her boss the middle finger and, remarkably, denied apologising. Ramaphosa stood by his statement.

This was seen as a calculated move by Sisulu to force Ramaphosa to fire her. Her backers felt it would burnish the flames of her victimhood, allowing other resentful ANC members to rally around her. 

It had to be true that either Ramaphosa or Sisulu were lying about the non-apology apology, yet the president did precisely nothing. 

Evidently, Sisulu is doubling down before the ANC elective conference in four weeks. Speaking to City Press, she said Ramaphosa is a let-down for a party which “has been blessed with impeccable commitment, character and integrity, and committed to fostering unity and rejecting impunity”.

Where exactly is this “integrity”? She surely can’t be referring to John Block, the ANC official convicted of fraud, whom she made a haughty song and dance about not being able to visit in prison a few weeks ago? 

Or maybe Zweli Mkhize, whom she describes as “decent and loyal” despite the Digital Vibes cloud hanging over him? 

If Ramaphosa is such a colossal failure, as she argues, then why does Sisulu opt to remain in power? Why not resign, if she feels so strongly? (The tourism industry will, no doubt, be gutted, but might just pull through.)

Flip that around, and you have to ask too: why does Ramaphosa keep her? Can it only be to keep his enemies close, thus short-circuiting any claim to victimhood? And, if so, will it work?

In recent weeks, Sisulu has marshalled the support of former president Jacob Zuma’s small but loud “radical economic transformation” faction, which now exists more significantly in the media than meaningfully in ANC structures. 

In the aftermath of the ANC conference, Sisulu is likely to be one of the biggest casualties; it will be surprising if she makes it back onto the party’s national executive. 

Once this happens, Ramaphosa will have no excuse to retain in his cabinet a loose cannon with a constituency borrowed from a compromised former president.