IT was the Ides of March last Tuesday, and perhaps a few remarks about Julius Caesar and his demise may yet still be in order. An autopsy — history’s first recorded post-mortem examination, no less — revealed the Roman dictator had been stabbed 23 times but that only one of his wounds, in the chest and piercing the aorta, had been fatal.
This was according to the historian Suetonius, who wrote that the physician who examined his body ruled that Caesar had bled to death as a result of this single dagger thrust.
As many as 60 senators plotted the assassination and, on that fateful day, more than 40 actively took part in the attack on Caesar. That only about half of them got close enough to inflict some damage suggests it was a rather messy if furious free-for-all and it may well be that some senators had accidentally stabbed each other, and even themselves, in the melee.
Fast forward, then, to recent events and the troubles facing our own imperious Roman. We were wondering, here at the Mahogany Ridge, whether that single, telling blow that would cut short the Jacob Zuma presidency had already been delivered or if it was still on its way.
Former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor may have been first with her allegation that the Guptas had offered her the public enterprises portfolio on condition she handed them South African Airways’ India operation.
But some Ridge regulars feel that Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas’s subsequent disclosure that the family offered him the job of finance minister shortly before Zuma fired Nhlanhla Nene would ultimately prove to have been the coup de grace.
Although it was hardly a giddy scramble to put in the collective boot for a bit of GBH — Guptafiable bodily harm — the revelations from those who came forward to reveal the extent of the influence of the President’s special friends in our public affairs were something of a game-changer.
This would no doubt have been of concern to the ANC national executive as they gathered yesterday in Centurion.
The NEC may be stuffed with those blindly loyal to Zuma, but this didn’t mean it was unable to read the warning signs out there. And, after all, whose interests were more important — theirs or a doomed president’s?
All eyes, then, on Fikile Mbalula, the Sport and Recreation Minister. Although he has publicly denied the Guptas gave him his job, he did not appear too happy about doing so. He told a press conference that he would not entertain such “aspersions based on fictions” and challenged those who made such claims to provide proof that he had, in fact, been hired by the family.
While we’re waiting for the Economic Freedom Fighters’ Julius Malema to step forward in this regard, Ajay Gupta’s comments on the matter were noted. It was an “urban legend”, he said in a double page advertisement in The New Age, the family’s newspaper.
He claimed he had read a report speculating that Mbalula would be made sports minister. As a joke, he later congratulated him on the “possible” appointment. “Fikile then tweeted that he was told by a Gupta that he is heading for the Cabinet.”
We must agree that Fikile’s appointment to the cabinet was a joke — but not really a funny one.
But back to the Gupta notice in The New Age and the counter-offensive against their detractors, which has taken an interesting new turn.
“We have been quiet until now,” they said, “but given the recent xenophobic and hate speech against us, now is the time to set the record straight,” and that is this: the family actually has very little interests in the country, most of its business is conducted elsewhere. It has become “the scapegoat” for every calamity and misfortune the country has suffered since the global economic meltdown.
The Guptas have not always been that quiet, though. Previously, they’d insisted that their role in South Africa was largely misunderstood. They had no interest in politics — they were businessmen interested in business.
And what business was that exactly? Did it involve, as the cynics have suggested, the buying and selling of political careers in the pursuit of unfettered wealth?
And what of the man the Guptas allegedly own? Some commentators have pointed to the President’s relaxed demeanour and laughter at the end of question time in the National Assembly on Thursday and suggested that this was hardly indicative of a man worried about his future.
But then Julius Caesar also had a sense of humour. He was probably laughing even as he made his way through the streets of Rome that last morning, 2 060 years ago.
A version of this article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.
