Speech by Leon Schreiber MP in reply to the debate on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s budget vote speech, 2 June 2021

The Fall of the Myth-Maker

Madame Speaker,

I don’t know if you are familiar with the TV programme, MythBusters. It is a show about using the scientific method to test and falsify popular myths.

In one episode, the MythBusters memorably expose the popular myth that the Apollo 11 moon-landing was a hoax.

You see, that’s the thing about myths. They can become very popular and widely believed. But that doesn’t make them true.

Don’t get me wrong. Myths are powerful cognitive tools that help human beings create comforting stories, especially during times of trouble.

Throughout history, myths have served as a way to galvanise people into collective action.

But the problem with myths is that they are – by definition – untrue.

Every myth has an expiry date.

As MythBusters demonstrates, myths expire as soon as they are confronted by fact and reality.

And when a myth dies, the entire edifice of comforting beliefs that was built around that myth also comes tumbling down.

Now, Mr President, I have to hand it to you. You are a master myth-maker.

Throughout your career, you have weaved stories about yourself that have helped you climb the greasy pole and escape accountability.

In fact, your political career is little more than a succession of myths.

First, came the skilled negotiator.

Then, the brilliant businessman.

And, most recently, you’ve been playing the character of the anti-corruption crusader who is seemingly committed to good governance, accountability and transparency.

If the story ended there, it would make for one fantastic fairy-tale.

But like all myths, your persona is built around a fundamental set of untruths.

And since you have become President, the myths you so visibly hold dear about yourself have run into cold, hard reality.

In a twist of poetic irony, the fulfilment of your highest ambition is the very thing that is unravelling the many myths you have stitched together about yourself.

And with apologies to the creators of the TV show: there is nothing that busts myths quicker than executive office.

In the little more than three years since you became President, the reality of your true weakness has laid waste to your founding myths.

Where once there was the myth of the skilled negotiator, there is now only a weak and indecisive man who creates a talk shop for every problem he cannot solve.

Where once there was the myth of the brilliant businessman, there is now only an opportunist who used BEE to trample on the poor on his way to unfathomable riches.

And where once there was the myth of the great anti-corruption governor, there is now only lust for power and factional double-standards.

It is especially the busting of this last myth – the idea that your administration will magically rise above the greed and corruption coded into the genes of the ANC – that is going to destroy your mythical legacy.

The latest myth you built promised us a corruption clean-up, accountability, good governance and transparency.

But the reality is that you are using the suffering of South Africans at the hands of corrupt politicians to protect your cronies while promoting your factional interest.

It is as clear as daylight that when it is your allies who are caught looting, your enthusiasm for battling corruption is suddenly replaced by endless excuses.

Your own health minister – the very person charged with keeping South Africans alive during a global pandemic – appears to have helped himself, his family and his friends to steal from the people. You have done nothing but protect him.

Your own spokesperson was implicated in looting funds meant to protect South Africa from Covid. You have done nothing but protect her.

Your own deputy minister of state security, who is supposed to protect the people from our enemies, has himself been exposed as an enemy of the people in front of the Zondo Commission. You have done nothing but protect him.

You are applying this flagrant double-standard because it is a myth that that you have any real interest in cleaning up corruption.

You have exposed your real aim, which is to cynically exploit South Africa’s yearning to get rid of corruption in order to deal with your factional enemies and to accumulate as much political power as you possibly can.

You are using the people of South Africa as pawns in your little factional freakshow.

Your myth also promised us a President who would be accountable and transparent.

While almost all other world leaders have regularly taken questions from journalists throughout the Covid pandemic, our President runs away from the media after each of his Covid monologues.

While leaders like New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern appointed the leader of the opposition to head a special parliamentary committee to exercise Covid oversight, our President hides from this House behind a computer screen during questions time.

As for the myth of transparency, please tell us Mr President: why are you so determined to hide the truth about your role in cadre deployment from the people?

Why did you refuse to comply with the DA’s simple PAIA request to see the records of your cadre deployment committee?

Why are you so determined to spend millions of Rands in court at a time when your party already cannot pay salaries, just to hide the truth about cadre deployment from the public?

Whether you like it or not, the people of South Africa have a right to know what your role was in the appointment of people like Dudu Myeni, Hlaudi Motsoeneng and Arthur Fraser while you were the chairperson of the ANC’s cadre deployment committee.

They also have a right to know if you were telling the truth to judge Zondo when you refused to give us straight answers.

You want us to believe that you had no involvement in the appointment of the state capture brigade even though you were the head of the very committee that was designed explicitly to do that.

Please don’t insult our intelligence, Mr President.

Instead of myths, we want receipts.

That is why the DA has filed court papers to compel you to comply with our PAIA request to make your cadre deployment records public.

But if your myth of transparency was true, there would be no reason for us to go to court in the first place.

Finally, your addiction to cadre deployment also exposes the myth that you are supposedly interested in good governance.

When you were under oath in front of judge Zondo, you admitted that you were, in the first instance, a “party person.”

Your presidency has made it abundantly clear that, for you, the interests of the ANC always come before the interests of the country.

Instead of supporting the DA’s End Cadre Deployment Bill, you are doubling down on cadre deployment.

This evil system is the foundation of state capture and corruption, because it gives your party the unconstitutional power to appoint people to civil service positions on the basis of loyalty to the ANC, rather than on the basis of merit.

It is important to be clear about this.

While it is normal in any democracy for members of Cabinet, Premiers, MECs and their political advisors to be appointed by the party, cadre deployment extends the control of the ANC deep into the civil service as well.

Cadre deployment is the reason why we see so many spectacularly corrupt and incompetent ANC cadres appointed as Directors-General and CEOs of state-owned enterprises, instead of competent professionals.

Thousands of talented graduates and experienced professionals are unemployed because of this system of job reservation for ANC cronies.

Cadre deployment is also the reason why your government never gets anything done. The people you have appointed to run the civil service couldn’t even run a bath.

And if you want to see what is possible when cadre deployment is eradicated, simply look to the Western Cape and DA-run municipalities.

These are the only governments that actually get things done, precisely because they don’t do cadre deployment.

Madame Speaker,

While the President continues to mutilate the myths he constructed around himself, South Africans are left to ponder a final question: what happens after a myth goes bust?

Fortunately, history is littered with examples for us to learn from.

Once a myth stands exposed, the people who bought into it feel a deep sense of betrayal and anger.

And their vengeance is swift.

As the people tear down the monuments to the myth, and abandon every last vestige of the comforting lies they were once made to believe, the myth-maker is left standing – exposed and alone – in the uncompromising gaze of history.

Thank you.

Dr Leon Schreiber MP