LAST Sunday I mentioned how worried it made me that kids at Wits elected that Hitler-loving liar, Mcebo Dlamini, as SRC president.

I’m happy to see he has now been fired, but I don’t know if I’m happy with how the whole thing went down.

My gogo always used to tell us kids that you have to do the right thing for the right reason. She was quite serious about it, and you could expect a good few klaps if you didn’t take her advice seriously.

Anyway, I get the feeling that the firing of this Nazi youth was a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

Wits kicked him out for some of the kak he got up to in the past, instead of taking the bull by the swastika.

Maybe the university was worried it would appear to be giving in to demands from Jewish students and citizens who were rightly upset and infuriated by Dlamini’s comments.

After all, and I don’t know why, but these days some politicians like to make the Jews scapegoats for Mzansi’s problems. That’s not an original thing to do, I must say.

But in any case, if you want to prove how militant and revolutionary you are, you can do no better than go on about Zionism and Israel and whatnot.

Never mind that you probably don’t have a clue about what you’re saying. Just use the keywords and you too can get instant revolutionary street credit.

But this whole affair also got me thinking about how it’s not just university students who make some bizarre decisions about who they put in positions of power.

The same thing happens at the highest levels of government.

But while it seems you can at least be fired from your SRC job if you mess up, that doesn’t really happen when it comes to senior government officials.

They talk a lot about accountability and performance and all those things, but I just can’t take them seriously.

Not when ministers stick around even after they’ve presided over huge failures and disasters.

A famous example is of course that of Riah Phiyega, who is still the country’s top cop even after the events of Marikana and our worsening crime rate.

Someone else who’s been presiding over a whole list of mess-ups recently is Minister for State Security, David Mahlobo.

Remember when the State Security Agency (SSA) decided to investigate Thuli Madonsela and Julius Malema as possible CIA spies, based on no
evidence except some stupid, anonymous blog post?

If they take stuff like that seriously, how are we supposed to believe they can protect us against foreign spies who actually know how to do their jobs?

Then the time the SSA came up with what they must have thought was the brilliant idea of putting a cellphone jamming device in Parliament. Talk about an evil – and stupid – plan!

The king of spies is also being criticised for not foreseeing the recent spate of attacks on foreigners, and for the leak of tons of Mzansi’s secret spy documents to Al Jazeera.

That’s quite an impressive list of screw-ups. But do you think any of it gives him sleepless nights? No way!

When you’re in government, you can get away with the sort of things that would get you a dismissal at any other job, or at least a disciplinary hearing and a bad score at your next performance review.

It’s different rules for different people, I guess.

We’ve got to realise there’s something seriously wrong when a cashier who messes up at work has a bigger chance of being fired than a
government minister, whose failures affect everyone and can cost lives.

I’m telling you, every year fewer and fewer things seem to make sense to me...

Let me know what you think by sending an email to [email protected] .

Until next time, salani kahle!

This article first appeared in the Sunday Sun.