ONE consequence of the lengthy break in the Oscar Pistorius trial is that the busybody foreigners out here to cover the Court Drama of the Century du jour have had a bit of spare time on their hands.
Some reporters, with a little prodding from editors, have made use of the opportunity to poke around for other stories and, in so doing, possibly reassure management that the escalating hotel bar tab really is the sort of justifiable damage that comes with a day's work in the field.
The Times of London, for example, this week offered its readers a glimpse into the unsophisticated mind of our other notable alpha brat, Julius Malema. The commander in chief of the Economic Freedom Fighters was in familiar attention-seeking form, it must be said, and spoke movingly of his plans to seize our worldly possessions without compensation. All on his first day in office as president, mind you.
Malema was asked about his taste for the finer things in life - his former Sandton home being an obvious starting point - and . . . well, here it all got a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. "Our struggle is not to live with our people in the shacks," he explained. "Our struggle is to take the people out of the shacks and give them a better life. The question of where I stay and how I dress is immaterial."
Perhaps it would have been immaterial had the commander been able to satisfy our curiosity as to how he'd been able to afford where he stayed and how he dressed. The Times, for example, did raise the issue of his expensive wristwatches. "I have never owned a Breitling - the watches were always borrowed to me," Malema replied.
The watches were borrowed to me?
That's genius, that is - straight from the pages of Evelyn Waugh's Black Mischief. How do you respond to such an outrageous porkie? One can easily imagine the poor hack emerging from that interview in a state of concussion. Only hours later - when the fog of incomprehensibility had lifted and the brain had unfuddled - would it have dawned on him to have inquired of the CIC: And who was it, exactly, that borrowed the watches to you?
But moving on to Nkandla, as we must. It's a great pity that President Jacob Zuma's official reaction to the Public Protector's report into the security upgrades at his KwaZulu-Natal home has been nowhere near as entertaining.
Zuma met Thuli Madonsela's Wednesday deadline for a response to Parliament to her damaging findings by informing Speaker Max Sisulu that the Special Investigations Unit were also investigating the Nkandla upgrades and that he would only give full and proper consideration to the matter once he'd received the SIU report. The SIU, meanwhile, indicated that they'd probably only wind up their investigation at the end of May - which neatly puts the matter off the formal agenda until after the elections.
In other words, "Get stuffed. I am the president. I am accountable to no-one."
But there is good news - or bad news, if you're the ruling party. Not only is this scandal not going anywhere anytime soon, but it's getting worse with each passing day.
Consider the ANC's failed South Gauteng High Court action to get the DA to retract and apologise for an SMS campaign that informed Gauteng voters that the Nkandla report "shows how Zuma stole your money to build his R246m home". Acting Judge Mike Hellens, dismissing the ANC's application with costs, ruled the SMS constituted fair comment.
Shame. The ruling party already had so much on its plate as it is with regard to Nkandla damage control. Now this. The president stole our money? Fair comment? That, as the Mahogany Ridge regulars would tell you, is heavy stuff in any opposition party's election campaign arsenal.
ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu, who knows the inside of a court, was quite the legal expert when he delivered the party's reaction. "On the face of the judgment," he said, "it appears that the judge erred in applying laws of defamation to a matter governed by Electoral laws. Further, the court seem to have erred by not accepting that the right to freedom of expression is correctly limited by the Electoral Act."
Mthembu did not however explain why the ANC had adopted a legal approach that was consistent with Luthuli House's "see-no-evil" Nkandla strategy: avoid at all costs every aspect of the Nkandla report where it concerns the president. And so it refused to place before the court any evidence in Madonsela's findings to support its case that Zuma did not steal our money.
Thus, a rather easy victory for free speech was ensured.
This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.
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