Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: When we begged for verbs, my leader, you gave us collective nouns

Ah, Chief Dwasaho! As usual, I am disappointed in you. I have been your trusted troubleshooting wingman for six years, but you have not honoured me with even a response. By the time this letter reaches your desk, your presidential future will be hanging by a thread. New tenant loading at Mahlamba Ndlopfu.

Still, this is an ode to a president who never was. The Constitutional Court has ruled that using your parliamentary majority to quash the Phala Phala matter was plainly unlawful. So, my leader, if you have not resigned by now, impeachment’s cold corridor may be next.

During your time, from 2018 to 2026, you stopped using action words, my leader. Verbs, as anyone in primary school will tell us, are action words. Build. Fix. Arrest. Prosecute. Deliver. Govern.

Instead, Comrade Leadership, you ran the country with group words and collective nouns: commissions, crisis committees, task teams, councils, panels, forums and dialogues. Where the country demanded service delivery, you gave us words, promises and process. Where South Africans asked for action, you offered architecture: plans, designs and organisational structures, but precious little verbing.

In another rag, I had already warned that under your newly minted presidency, government by task team was fast becoming a national disease. Little did I know then, my leader, that what had begun as an administrative habit would mature under your watch into a fully fledged constitutional culture.

Roots of inaction

Let us start at the beginning. In 2018, SARS was reeling from State Capture. You appointed the Nugent Commission to investigate tax maladministration and misgovernance. Your first instinct was not to act, but to inquire, gather evidence, report and recommend.

Then came the Mpati Commission into the Public Investment Corporation to investigate claims of maladministration, bad investments, poor governance and political meddling. The presidential reflex was familiar: call experts, hold hearings, wait for the report. Action? Dololo to this day.

Then came the nearly R1-billion Zondo Commission, the giant of them all, inherited from the Zuma era but embraced as the republic’s laundry room. It delivered volumes of evidence: names, dates, invoices, enough to make handcuffs feel underused. Yet the journey from evidence to orange overalls stretched far longer than the ride from Phala Phala farm to the Nkandla compound on a horse-drawn wagon.

The moment called for prosecution. You gave us implementation plans. The moment called for consequence. You gave us processes.

In 2025 came another punchline: your government appointed a retired judge to investigate why Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations went unfulfilled. Read that again and weep.

A commission about another commission, a mirror facing another mirror. It is as if our republic is trapped endlessly reflecting on itself in the waiting room of justice, never fully acting. My leader, certainty and closure in South Africa have become a moving target, always just out of reach, escorted by the flashing blue lights of political theatre.

Then the Madlanga Commission followed, after grave allegations of corruption in the justice system. The police, meant to protect the republic, were in question. The moment called for swift arrests. It called for the state to show that it still had a spine. But again, Comrade Leadership, your government chose its favoured tool: another commission of inquiry.

And what has the Madlanga Commission already given us? You guessed right, my leader: a police task team. Although the commission had already found that certain individuals had criminal cases to answer, the President directed the police to establish a task team to investigate further.

Thus came the usual procession of collective nouns. In another world, we would have had arrests instead of a commission and a police task team.

Slow death

I am not allergic to expertise. I am allergic to substitution. A committee is not a conviction. A commission is not a sentence. A task team is not a working water tap. A forum is not a repaired road. A crisis committee is not water in a bucket.

That was the heart of your presidency, my leader. You mastered collective nouns instead of service delivery. Your government swapped action for labels. South Africans lived under a state skilled at naming each crisis, but slow to fix them.

Electricity trouble? National Energy Crisis Committee. Water trouble? National Water Crisis Committee. Foot-and-mouth disease? Task team. Fuel prices? Task team. Crime? Commission. Corruption? Another commission, a response plan, then a task force. Local government failure? White paper process.

At this rate, my leader, even potholes may soon be addressed, not by repairs but by the creation of an interministerial committee, headed by a retired judge, supported by two advocates and reporting on forms instead of filling holes.

History may yet be kind to you. It may say you were sober, careful and constitutional. It may say you avoided recklessness. It may even say you restored some institutions from the ruins of the Zuma years.

But history is also cruel, Comrade Leadership. It may say that when South Africa begged for verbs, you gave it collective nouns. It may say that you confused complying with reviewing. It may say you were the president who never really was – not because you did not enjoy the trappings of high office, but because you did not want to turn advice into real results, preferring the comfort of a placeholder instead.

My wager is this: the ANC National Executive Committee will establish a task team on the Constitutional Court judgment, refer it to the National Working Committee, and return it to the NEC, where collective responsibility will be duly agreed. Nkandla judgment. Same process. Same outcome. Nothing.

Meanwhile, my leader, you may yet appear before the No-Integrity Commission, hoping for OMO-clean absolution. Thus, under Comrade Leadership, even constitutional catastrophe must first pass through collective nouns before action.

Till next week, my man. Sentence me to another task team, where inconvenient truths go to die slowly. DM

Bhekisisa Mncube is an award-winning author and columnist.

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