DO you know what a language sounds like when it has been dragged outside by a bureaucrat and battered senseless?

You don't? 

Then you need to listen up a while to senior ANC MP and justice committee chairman Mathole Motshekga.

The brutality with which Motshekga lays into English, all the jargon he stuffs into a bit of guff to impress listeners whenever cameras are pointed at him and microphones are thrust in his face, is shocking.

And why, you may ask, should politicians speak in a plain, unambiguous manner when they could ponce away like a big dictionary on drugs?

The answer, of course, is that, they're narcissists and want to sound impressive even when they mislead the public. George Orwell was on to this when he wrote: "Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

Motshekga was full of said wind on Thursday, speaking to the media after the ad hoc parliamentary committee he served on as chief Rottweiler had ruled that President Jacob Zuma did not unduly benefit from the R246-million security upgrade at Nkandla. And because Zuma had been absolved of any wrongdoing in this sordid mess, he therefore didn't have to pay back a cent.

Given that the committee consisted entirely of ANC members after opposition MPs walked out in protest, you could total the number of South Africans genuinely surprised at these findings using the fingers on the left hand of a particularly accident-prone butcher and still have several digits in reserve.

The committee's ruling, of course, went against the findings in March of Public Protector Thuli Madonsela who, following a two-year investigation, found that Zuma and kin had indeed benefitted from the "non-security" upgrades - swimming pool, chicken run, new age cattle kraal, crazy paving - and recommended that the President pay back a suitable portion of the costs.

Considering the tenor of the ANC and its allies' subsequent criticism of Mandonsela - she's an FBI agent, has a thing for publicity, has a big nose, thinks she's God, and so on - you could argue that there was no doubting the eventual outcome here. But the attacks on Madonsela continued even now with Motshekga suggesting that she was no expert when it came to the assessment of "undue benefit".

That's at least what we here at the Mahogany Ridge suspect he was on about when he reportedly let rip with the following: 

"It cannot and should not be said, unless we have an expert assessment and evidence that there is enhance of the so-called non-security features which have unduly benefitted the President, because such enhancement, if any, could result from alignment of the recreated structures or removed structures with the overall plan. So, in my view I would find that it would be premature to come to a conclusion to say there was undue benefit, because that determination must be preceded by expert assessment and determination. So far I don't find any objective and rational basis to come to that conclusion."

So, like, WTF? What does all that mean? Why could Motshekga not just come out and say, look, we don't care much for Madonsela's report, so stuff that for a lark? That at least would be the decent thing to do.

There were, according to reports, further doublespeak and half-truths when Motshekga and company leapt on the ruling by Cape Town High Court Judge Ashton Schippers in the matter between the DA and the SABC over Hlaudi Motsoeneng to bolster their argument that the public protector's reports were, in any case, not enforceable or binding like court judgments. 

But Schippers had ruled that the state could only reject such reports on "rational grounds" - and herein lay the rub: on what rational grounds did Motshekga and the whitewash committee reject Madonsela's Nkandla findings? 

In other words, it would be irrational for any organ of state to reject the findings and the remedial action suggested by Madonsela just because, well, that's what the big guy wants.

And, speaking of Mr Bashful, while he has made it abundantly clear that he is definitely not accepting the Madonsela's recommendations, Zuma has yet to provide parliament - and the country - with a satisfactory explanation for this rejection.

We don't expect one in a hurry, either. 

The President has yet to answer a full parliamentary session of oral questions for the entire year of 2014. He is afraid of accountability - and that is very sad.

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.

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