As a senior ANC politician returns with her entourage from a trip to Russia and minister of the revels, Gayton McKenzie, defends dropping R31m on a jaunt to the World Cup, South Africans would be forgiven for despairing that our country is still run by the financially incontinent. But I would urge restraint and even acceptance in both instances.
Over the weekend the Sunday Times reported that Refilwe Mtshweni-Tsipane, chair of the National Council of Provinces, “may have landed in hot water”, presumably referring to the ANC’s current disciplinary processes whereby those suspected of wrongdoing — or, in this case, failing to get parliamentary approval — are sent home to have a long bath so that they can think about what they’ve done.
According to the paper, eyebrows have also been raised by the fact that Mtshweni-Tsipane’s party included five MPs accompanied by no fewer than eight other officials, all travelling business class on Emirates at about R95,000 a pop.
McKenzie, meanwhile, says he has “nothing to hide” about taking 18 officials, 30 artists, and 27 former Bafana Bafana players to Mexico for the World Cup, with 76 “lucky fans”, “journalists, influencers and podcasters” paid for by private sponsors.
Now, as I said at the start, I understand why some exhausted South Africans might feel their last nerve jangled by the prospect of our government continuing to spray cash at fripperies, but I do believe that there are extenuating circumstances in both cases.
Indeed, in the matter of Mtshweni-Tsipane, there is a strong chance that the whole trip to Russia was an honest accident.
This, after all, is the former premier of Limpopo who, when breaking her own administration’s rules by failing to wear a mask to a funeral during the Covid pandemic, explained that she hadn’t noticed that the mask had fallen off.
In other words, we are dealing with someone who is extremely, even hilariously, unaware of what is going on and who is also surrounded by people who are unable to speak or, indeed, make basic warning gestures about masks falling off.
It is therefore entirely possible that she wandered onto a flight to Russia, thinking it was the dairy aisle of her local Woolies, and that her mute, helpless entourage followed her aboard and flopped down, exhausted and resigned to their fates, in business class.
That’s also a lot of luggage, and given recent reports about “radioactive incidents” happening at Koeberg in the past three weeks, I would be happy to forgive and forget the whole thing if she and her entourage revealed that they’d come back with a few hundred state-of-the-art hazmat suits stuffed in their suitcases, bought for a cup of petrol from fuel-starved Russians.
As for McKenzie, the defence writes itself.
First up, there’s the piddling amount of money involved. Yes, R31m is a lot to you and me, but it’s also roughly how much South Africa’s municipalities blow on unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful spending roughly every eight hours.
Could artists and neglected sportspeople have benefited from that R31m? Of course. But you know what would really benefit them? Having a functioning economy, built on growing industries, and municipalities that aren’t sucking us into fiscal oblivion.
Secondly, sending McKenzie to a tournament co-hosted by Donald Trump was always a very shrewd bit of realpolitik: had the two ever met, Trump would have found himself entirely seduced by someone who reminded him of himself in all sorts of ways, thereby giving a major boost to US-SA relations and a strong shot in the arm to McKenzie’s promise of turning the Karoo into Dubai, perhaps by stationing some American troops and tax dodgers there.
And that’s to say nothing of the priceless gift McKenzie gave those 30 artists he took with him.
Artists thrive on suffering, and I can imagine almost nothing that would fill up one’s wells of pain quite as much as having to go to a World Cup with Gayton McKenzie. And if that wasn’t enough, just imagine the trauma of spending a week or two living the high life and then having to come back to South Africa to a future of feeding funding applications into McKenzie’s paper shredder. No, the minister of arts & culture has provided enough inspiration for a thousand masterpieces.
All of which is to say that I think there are plenty of consolations here for the weary of heart.
But if all else fails, which is a strong possibility these days, just remember this: if we always send them our least impressive people, they’ll always underestimate us and never see us coming …
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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