JUSTICE MALALA: Are we about to see Ramaphosa's feet of clay?
'He has claimed that he did not know the extent of the rot. When the signs were so obvious?'
EXTRACT
For many of us, Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene is a hero. Yet, for years he has lied about his association with the Guptas. He sat and had tea with them – again and again and again. It was clearly more than just tea that was going on between them.
Who is next? Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of our country, was Jacob Zuma’s number two for three years. He was ANC deputy president for five years while state capture was on steroids. He has claimed that he did not know the extent of the rot. When the signs were so obvious? Will he be next to be found to have feet of clay?
We don’t know, but the question makes the lessons to be learnt from Aung San Suu Kyi and Nhlanhla Nene clear and numerous. First, no leader or political party is eternally or wholly incorruptible. We should not turn our political leaders into cults. Leaders are only “good” to the extent that they build and empower institutions of accountability in their countries.
It is our heroes, the ones we adore, who have the capacity to break our hearts. At the beginning of September Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, describing himself as “elderly, decrepit and formally retired”, wrote a letter of love and heartbreak to his own “fave”, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar. It was a letter at once heartbreaking and heartbroken, disappointed and dismayed. It was a letter suffused with a question that many of us here in SA often, as we watch our heroes stumble and fall at the altar of greed and corruption, ask ourselves: What happened to you? What happened to us? Aung San Suu Kyi has been a hero to many of us. Lauded by the international community after decades of imprisonment, torture, house arrest and repression by the military junta that ruled her country, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her fight for democracy in Myanmar. After political reforms she became the country’s civilian leader in a negotiated process, with the army retaining a signific...
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