A FAMOUS GROUSE

GOOD luck to those three Cabinet ministers who have been instructed to “interact” — as Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe so encouragingly put it — with the four banks that gave notice to shut down the accounts of the Gupta family company, Oakbay Investments.

Admittedly I myself on occasion have had to interact with the banks in such a fashion. They were not edifying displays. Hellish on the knees, the grovel. Besides, where does all the whining and begging get you anyway? Pardon my French, but putain nulle part — and most certainement.

Oakbay employees should bear this in mind. They have pleaded with the banks to change their minds, saying they would lose their jobs if the company couldn’t do business. It’s a seemingly reasonable approach, launching a “sympathy campaign”, but it’s a terrible mistake to assume that the banks actually care about such things.

Which is why the employees shouldn’t pin their hopes on the efforts of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, Labour Minister Mildred Olifant and Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane. Theirs is going to be a Sisyphean task.

Zwane, in particular, is an odd choice for the mission. He’s reportedly very close to the Guptas. He helped them acquire the Glencore Optimum colliery and his political adviser has now been revealed as also having a business connection with the family.

Perhaps the government really does believe that Zwane’s involvement will help, and that the banks wouldn’t really notice that a minister so compromised by the Guptas was being despatched to assist the family amid a firestorm of allegations of their capture of big chunks of state.

Here at the Mahogany Ridge, we were wondering if Cabinet perhaps not aware that this sort of behaviour was probably why the accounts were being closed in the first place.

But maybe not. After all, South Africa could now be regarded as a Potemkin country, a cheery construct designed to shield President Jacob Zuma and his inner circle from the mounting discord and seething anger behind an illusion of normality.

The farcical Seriti Commission of Inquiry into the arms deal was just another whitewashing of this facade, as were the President’s recent comments, following the damning Constitutional Court judgment on the Nkandla upgrades, that the law was too “complicated” for African problems and that they should rather be solved “the African way”.

But occasionally the real world slips through the cracks — as it did in Port Elizabeth  for the launch of the ruling party’s local government election manifesto.

It did so for ANC Women’s League president Bathabile Dlamini — and it came as a rude shock, too. A loyal Zumanaut, she was reduced to tears at the opening of a drug treatment centre in New Brighton after being subjected to a barrage of insults from angry residents who told her that she was not wanted in the area and that she was drunk “from expensive whisky”.

The half empty Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, where the President spoke, was probably a more sobering dose of that reality. 

And in all likelihood there will be another dose of same when the ministers meet the banks.

The latter, admittedly, do have their detractors. They’ve been accused of “political posturing” by the trade unions, who fear for the livelihoods of workers. The ANCWL, meanwhile, have proposed a “total shut-down of these institutions whose aim is to attack the working class using their imperialism muscles”.

The banks, we suspect, do enjoy this sort of attention. There’s not much in the way of thrills and spills and high adventure in the financial institutions. Being a banker is not the same, let’s say, as being a fireman or even a safari guide. It’s all very grey, dull and boring, doing sums and playing with rubber stamps.

How, then, do bankers get their kicks? By turning people down, and not just the little guys, but the big stuffs too. Here at the Ridge we imagine they’d be rather gracious with the ministers, but it’s going to be “sorry, no can do” all the same.

Bankers may be a cold sort, but they do have long memories. They will almost certainly recall how the ANC and its allies rounded on First National Bank for its “You Can Help” advertising campaign in January 2013.

The campaign, you’ll remember, featured online videos in which youths share their views about the country. In one of them, a participant says, “Stop voting for the same government in hopes for change – instead, change your hopes to a government that has the same hopes as us.” 

For this, FNB were accused of “treachery” and attempting to “recreate an Arab Spring of some sort in South Africa”.

It’s silly to talk of tit-for-tat, but perhaps more “treachery” is on the cards.

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.