First point: caveat lector - reader beware: I consider Moe Shaik to be a friend. I do not descend into the slough of despond when I hear his voice, see his bald pate, or read that he has a job as chief of the secret service, and I do not find him guilty (of anything) by fraternal association - as does, for example, Paul Trewhela.

In a recent piece (see here), Trewhela wrote that it was a "bad, bad week for South Africa" - and he wasn't being satirical - because inter alia the week ended with the announcement that Moe had been made the country's chief external spook.

What was, in Trewhela's view, the problem with Moe's appointment? Well, most importantly (in Trewhela's view), he is the brother of the evil Schabir and the apparently equally evil Chippy - not that Chippy has ever been charged with anything or ever been tried in any court other than that of the [Johannesburg] Sunday Times - but, hey, who cares about people being innocent until found guilty and all that troublesome guff, right?

Now, however, the second point. Most of what follows in this article does not emanate from Moe - in fact, he's probably not going to like it very much at all.

But, what the hell, the reportage of Moe's elevation to head of SA Secret Services - or rather what the media has had to say about Moe - has been so mindless and uninformed that I can't resist putting in my penny's worth.

The Democratic Alliance, whether one agrees with it or not, usually makes a sober, balanced point about whatever it is commenting on. But, when it came to Moe's appointment, it seemed like the DA had Karen Bliksem writing its press release. The DA said that appointing Shaik was like making King Herod head of the local crèche. Or (as I thought to myself, clever dick that I am) it was tantamount to making Salome head of the Prophets Benevolent Society.

Meanwhile, COPE's ever-lugubrious Phillip Dexter said that "[Moe] Shaik had distinguished himself as being unprofessional, partisan and had even breached state security by releasing classified information to the public during the Hefer Commission. That President Zuma can so blatantly reward the loyalty of Shaik with this appointment bodes nothing but ill for our democracy."

In my view, the interesting part about the appointment of Moe to the chieftainship of SASS was not the appointment per se of Moe or that he is the brother of Schabir and Chippy. What is interesting is what it tells us about Jacob G Zuma, the president of the beloved republic.

Our minds drift back, as Frank Zappa would have said, to the general election earlier this year - the one that swept Zuma and the ANC back into power. Did you notice that Moe's name did not feature on the relevant ANC list? No, of course you didn't, because you weren't thinking about Moe and the election. But Moe was.

Moe's a believer, folks. For him the Struggle continues. He has served his liberation party and his country and he wants to continue serving them. He wants to be in the government. There are, mirabile dictu, people like that. You and I might just want to sit on our bottoms, smoke our pipes, drink whiskey, and leaf through our collection of medieval pornography - not Moe. He wants to be part of the action. And he was pretty hurt that there wasn't a massive amount of support forthcoming for him from the ANC ranks.

What do we learn from this? (Not from Moe's zealousness, but from the fact that he didn't shape on the ANC election list.) We learn that Trewhela is not the only person who turned away from the Shaiks as a result of the Schabir fandango. There were also a lot of people in the ANC who said to Zuma that he needed to distance himself from that pesky Indian family.

Actually, there were (and are) a lot of people in the ANC whom I - since I am, after all, a polite white liberal - will call Africanists (and nothing else). Young Julius Malema wasn't talking just on his own behalf when he said recently (to Zuma presumably), about the "economic cluster" in the government, that there were too many Indians, chief.

And the Africanists think that Africa (and South Africa) belongs to the Africans, not to anyone else, whatever the Freedom Charter and Nelson Mandela and the older members of the ANC might say.

This is why it has taken so long for Shaik to be appointed. Zuma has had a battle royal on his hands. There were (are) ANC honchos who didn't want another chara to be appointed to anything meaningful - and certainly not the brother of the one who almost dragged the boss into court and who was (obviously) the cause of all the trouble anyway ("The Indian who caused all the trouble").

So Zuma had to go out to bat for Moe; and Zuma's appointment of Shaik is significant for at least three reasons.

It's significant, firstly, because it was Zuma metaphorically - maybe even literally - stamping his foot and saying, "Okay, guys, I'm big on consensus, but there some things that I want - and this is one of them". It is Zuma asserting his own personality and desires, against the better judgment of many people around him.

It's significant, secondly, because it's Zuma saying he won't have any truck with the Africanists/with racism. Remember: Zuma shut Malema down pretty smartly after the comments about Gill Marcus et al.

Third, Zuma took a lot of fire for "disloyalty". If Schabir was his comrade, and the Shaiks were his comrades, went the thesis, why did Zuma not go to court - give evidence - during Shaik's trial?

In retrospect, it's clear that the worst thing Zuma could have done was to have gone anywhere near Shaik's trial. If he had, I believe that South African history would have been different; I think he might well have incriminated himself and he would have been zapped.

Anyway, the point is that accusations of disloyalty must have rankled - and there must thus be some satisfaction for Zuma in being able to "thank" the Shaiks.

But is it not a travesty that the Shaiks be thanked via an appointment to a government position? I don't think so. Moe has had experience as a government employee and of course he was a "spy". And I believe he is far more competent than a number of people in high positions.

But Moe Shaik is not the only appointment by Zuma of those who are apparently loyal to him. There has also been his choices of chief justice and national commissioner of police.

Will these appointments come back to bite Zuma? I don't think so.

But I have been reminded of an essay published in 2006 by James Myburgh, now editor of Politicsweb, in which he analysed former President Thabo Mbeki's alleged Machiavellianism (see here). Myburgh wrote:

"By making loyalty the key criteria in selection to his team, Mbeki disregarded a second aspect of Machiavelli's advice. This was that, ‘princes, especially new ones, have found men who were suspect at the start of their rule more loyal and useful than those who, at the start, were their trusted friends.'

"A prince, Machiavelli noted, will not have any difficulty winning over those who were initially his enemies, ‘when they are such that they need someone to lean upon. And they are all the more forced to serve him loyally inasmuch as they realize that it is more necessary for them to wipe out with their actions the bad opinion he had formed of them; and so the prince finds them more useful than those who feel themselves so secure in his service that they neglect his interests.'

"Mbeki could quite easily have won over his former enemies once he had secured power. Instead, he chose to push out Afrikaners from state service, and then marginalise his internal party rivals and opponents. His decision to fill key positions in party and state with his trusted friends has now come back to bite him. It would be putting it mildly to say that once loyal Mbeki-ites like Jacob Zuma, Billy Masetlha, and Jackie Selebi, have ended up ‘neglecting' his interests."

I leave it there.

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