“Everybody knows that the boat is leaking/

Everybody knows that the captain lied/

Everybody got this broken feeling/

Like their father or their dog just died”

Leonard Cohen – Everybody Knows

It was political philosopher Hannah Arendt, in a 1971 essay on the lies, deception and more importantly, self-deception, of the US administration’s involvement in the war in Indochina, who reflected that while deception, secrecy and lies have always played a significant role in the realm of politics, it is the self-deception of the liar (or those who lie on their behalf) that is “the danger par excellence”.

“The self deceived deceiver loses all contact not only with his audience, but also with the real world, which still will catch up with him, because he can remove his mind from it, but not his body,” suggested Arendt.

While in his own mind President Jacob Zuma (and those who defend him) might have convinced themselves that the public funding of the R246 million upgrades to his private home are justified, good and perfectly legal, the shimmering resort at Nxamalala cannot be erased from the geographical landscape. So too the image (or the body) of our president who, of late, has added to his defensive song and dance routine, the insults of mockery and laughter. These have all, over time, come to define Zuma’s destructive presidency.

Last week, while Police Minister Nathi Nhleko sweated and recited his way through the 51-page Nkandla whitewash that not only exonerated President Jacob Zuma but also called for even further expenditure, South Africans finally saw through the smoke and mirrors, the Felliniesque videos, the counterfeit Nkandlaspeak.

Nhleko’s report ignored completely and contradicted the report by the Public Protector that found that President Zuma and his family did unduly benefit from the publically funded upgrades and should pay back a portion of the money.

It was perhaps the moment that Arendt described as one when “the audience to which the lies are addressed is forced to disregard altogether the distinguishing line between truth and falsehood – it does not matter which anymore, if your life depends on your acting as though you trusted, truth that can be relied on disappears entirely from public life and with it the stabilising factor in the ever-changing affairs of men.”

And it is this corrosive aspect of the deception that the ruling party and its current leadership will have to deal with in future. For the “big lie” that is Nkandla will inevitably in inexorably infect any trust, truth or “good story” the party might want to tell. While many await for the ANC to “self correct”, it is clear those who currently surround the president and depend on him for their livelihoods do not believe there is any self correcting to be done.

It was playwright and public intellectual, Arthur Miller, in a 2001 lecture titled “On Politics and the Art of Acting” exploring the intersection between the entertainment industry and politics who warned that “The trouble is that a leader somehow comes to symbolise his country, and so the nagging question is whether, when real trouble comes, we can act ourselves out of it.”

Because we live in a Constitutional democracy, we still have ample opportunity to “act ourselves out of it” – out of Nkandlagate. Whether voters will punish the ANC by withholding their vote or opting to make their crosses elsewhere remains to be tested. But there is no doubt that Nkandla – however we choose to pronounce it – will continue to serve as the country’s centerpiece discussion point. The courts will also – in the interests of the transparency and accountability of government enshrined in our Constitution – have to still grapple with it.

However much ANC leadership and the president himself hopes Minister Nhleko’s performance put the matter to bed, the genie has now fully emerged from the bottle, it is now beyond the control of the political elites.

Opposition parties universally have vowed to continue to push for President Zuma to be held accountable, while others, including the United Front and former Cosatu Secretary General Zwelinzima Vavi, are determined to mobilise citizens to march on the Union Buildings and have also urged South Africans to “jam” the president’s hotline and email with demands for him to #paybackthemoney.

In a statement released this week the UF stated, “Nhleko’s report has engineered a profound ethical and Constitutional crisis that cannot be ignored. President Zuma’s government wantonly disregards the Constitutional obligation and duty for accountable, transparent, good and clean governance… Nkandla represents nothing else but the most greedy looting of public resources at the service of a greedy elite that President Zuma represents.”

The universal public responses to Nhleko’s findings have ranged from anger to disbelief and incredulity. You would be hard pressed to find a single public voice supporting the minister or his conclusions. Being lied to usually leaves the victim with messy and lingering feelings of betrayal. It was Immanuel Kant who opined, “Without truth, social intercourse and conversation become valueless”. When politicians or corporations lie they corrode the societies who are their intended audience or victims.

And it is this that might render Nhleko’s Nkandla report the tipping point.

Last week was not the first occasion President Zuma has made fools of us all. The list of comments, gaffes and violations of public trust are too lengthy to mention but include Guptagate, the various toadies appointed to top positions in the police, the NPA, the intelligence services, cabinet and government departments as well as those praise-singing ANC MPs who use parliament to protect their principal, no matter what.

The evidence of these failures far outweigh any successes that might realistically be celebrated.

In his lecture Miller describes Bill Clinton, another charming and popular political liar, as the American equivalent of Brer Rabbit, a folkloric trickster “who ravishes people’s vegetable gardens and, just when he seems to be cornered, charmingly distracts his pursuer with some outrageously engaging story, long enough to let him edge closer and closer to a hole down which he escapes.”

Only in this case Brer Zuma might not be disappearing alone down the hole; perhaps he will take the once proud ANC with him. And as for the vegetable garden that is South Africa? Hopefully it can be nourished by democracy and the Constitution. DM

Original photo: President Jacob Zuma’s residence in Nkandla in KwaZulu-Natal on Sunday, 4 November 2012. Picture: Giordano Stolley/SAPA