Huffing and puffing will blow this house right down

Ah, Chief Dwasaho! There is something almost poetic about a leader who arrives before the ANC’s no-Integrity Commission with lungs full of ­oxygen, but pockets curiously short on evidence. Take Sisisi Tolashe, Minister of Social Development. As first laid bare in Daily Maverick, the story is simple yet unclear.

Two Chinese-donated SUVs, reportedly destined for the ANC Women’s League, enter the political bloodstream. And yet, my leader, the cars do not behave like assets under stewardship. They vanish. They reappear in explanation, but not in the record. Their paper trail reads like a draft rather than a record.

The irony, my leader, is almost too rich. Before a body meant to interrogate integrity, the defence rests not on documentation, but on narrative. That the vehicles were kept safe. That those intentions were pure. That nothing untoward occurred.

Then comes the turn. Had the cars been registered under the ANC Women’s League, they risked being attached. So, they were kept off the books. Protected, we are told, almost by ancestral decree.

But we know the SUVs are not in storage. They are in motion. They moved. They circulated. They lived a life in the minister’s own family orbit.

And so the question remains: was this stewardship, or something else dressed up in softer language?

Was the minister huffing and puffing before the no-Integrity Commission, my leader? Perhaps. Yet she emerges intact. Clean. Reborn. A steward of assets never quite accounted for. A true cadre in a system where theatrics stand in for proof.

Governance theatre

You see, in our beloved Republic of Gupta, we have perfected a peculiar genre of governance theatre. It is called “huffing and puffing” in lieu of evidence. And its latest lead actor is Gareth Mnisi, the now suspended chief financial officer of the City of Tshwane. But Mnisi’s baptism is of a different order.

Before the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry into police capture and the infiltration of the justice system by organised criminals, Mnisi did not so much testify as exhale. Long explanations. Circular logic. A philosophical defence of what constitutes a conflict of interest in a country where conflict is now apparently a matter of interpretation.

He says he helped a friend’s brother. That friend is Fannie Nkosi, a South African Police Service officer now ­suspended and behind bars after his recent arrest, enjoying three meals a day without lifting a finger. Sadly, no bikes, no firearms, no ammo, no cash allowed. What a pit.

And the brother? Bheki, no relation to this cheeky columnist, is linked to Ngaphesheya Construction and Projects, a security outfit already circling, if not embedded within, the very municipal procurement ecosystem Mnisi oversees. So, when he says it was just help with tender documents, just advice, nothing serious, no benefit, no corruption, just brotherhood, we must measure the full weight of that word in a country where brotherhood sits at the intersection of access, influence and opportunity.

But brotherhood, my leader, is doing the heavy lifting here. It runs through a police officer whom the courts now regard as a risk to the justice system. Before his fall, he was already implicated in sharing sensitive police information with alleged cartel figures and moving between law enforcement and the underworld. The line between state and shadow does not blur by accident. It is walked, step by careful step. And so, the sentence collapses under its own weight.

Ah, my leader, corruption in South Africa has evolved. It no longer arrives with a brown envelope. It comes dressed as friendship. It speaks softly. It forwards WhatsApps.

And when confronted, Mnisi dismissed the exchanges with Nkosi and waved away the suggestion that a tight circle had its hands on the levers of security procurement in the City. He offered a line that now sits at the heart of this matter: this is all huffing and puffing. And so, my leader, we take him at his word. We huff. We puff. We provide oxygenation instead of documentation.

Mnisi afloat

Because the allegations are not small. They are not whispers in the corridors of Luthuli House. They are sworn testimony before a commission that Mnisi was part of a network allegedly manipulating procurement processes to favour preferred bidders. He chaired the bid adjudication committee, the nerve centre of municipal procurement. And yet we are asked to believe he floated above the system.

Even Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga was not persuaded. He described Mnisi’s understanding of conflict of interest as narrow. A polite judicial way of saying the explanation does not hold.

Suspension, my leader, for alleged interference in how billions of rand move through the veins of a municipality.

And yet, the defence remains weightless. It is not built on documents. It floats like a political speech at a funeral, long on emotion, short on fact.

My leader, we have reached a dangerous place in our body politic, where explanation has replaced accountability and the louder the denial, the thinner the substance.

In this grammar of misgovernance, huffing is a verb, puffing an adjective. Evidence is an absent noun in a sentence that obscures rather than illuminates.

My leader, I also appeared before the no-Integrity Commission. I admitted I was a cadre gone rogue, writing letters in this rag, casting aspersions on leadership. I came out on top. OMO clean. Jeyes Fluid washed.

This commission was never meant to be a laundromat. It was supposed to be a line in the sand. A place where ethical lapses are confronted before they metastasise into governance crises. Yet it’s now a political rehabilitation centre. This sends a message beyond Luthuli House. It tells every public official that if you can read the room, you can survive the scandal.

Till next week, my man. Let justice be done though the heavens may fall. DM

Bhekisisa Mncube is an award-winning columnist and author.

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.