Publication: Sunday Independent Issued: Date: 2006-01-22 Reporter: Jeremy Gordin

Favours for Fine-Feathered Friends

 

Publication 

Sunday Independent
Date

2006-01-22

Reporter

 Jeremy Gordin

Web Link

www.sundayindependent.co.za

 

'I don't know where Minister [Zola] Skweyiya was on that day. You must ask the minister where he was while his wife was away," said Murphy Morobe, the usually poker-faced presidential spokesperson, on Tuesday at about 1.30pm.

This retort was as close as Morobe came to sarcasm and exasperation - and, due to its (unintentional) suggestiveness, the comment brought, as they say, the house down.

Morobe was reacting to a question levelled at him more than a few times by Angela Quintal, the Independent Group's political editor. We'll come back to why she was so interested in the minister's whereabouts on December 27.

Another retort of Morobe's apparently went unheard by those in the house, the media centre at the Union Buildings, since no one mentioned it on the air or in print later.

Repeatedly asked why Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the deputy president, had chosen to take Thuthukile Mazibuko-Skweyiya, Zola Skweyiya's wife and a mining entrepreneur, along on her holiday trip to the United Arab Emirates, Morobe snapped back: "Why not? [Mazibuko-Skweyiya's] not a crook, is she?"

As most advocates will tell you, never ask a question, even rhetorically, unless you are pretty certain what the answer is going to be.

I do not know the answer to Morobe's question. All I know is that Mazibuko-Skweyiya is worth millions of rands, thanks to her 7,3 percent stake in Wesizwe Platinum; and that Wesizwe Platinum's prosperity is not unrelated to new prospecting permits that were issued to wholly owned subsidiary Bakubung Minerals when Mlambo-Ngcuka was minister of minerals and energy and responsible for approving all permits. The shares issued to Mazibuko-Skweyiya, now worth R64 million, cost her R265 in January 2004 *1.

I also know that Mazibuko-Skweyiya featured in last year's Mail &Guardian "oilgate exposé" after a company called Hartkon, which had renovated the Skweyiya home, received R65 000 from Imvume Management on the same day that a R50 000 payment was made to Bonga Mlambo, brother of the deputy president. Imvume was the company that paid R11 million to the ANC from money advanced by the state oil company, Petro SA.

The public protector found, however, that there had been nothing untoward about the payments.

Morobe's third gem: reacting to allegations that the cost of the deputy president's trip was as much as R700 000, and seeking to explain that people needed to be careful about throwing around huge numbers, especially a few months before an election, he said:

"Those who know [Mlambo-Ngcuka] know she is a very sensitive person. She obviously would be concerned, especially when you seek to counterpose the cost of the visit against the needs of [economically deprived] people out there ... R700 000 is just going to be a drop in the ocean when you try to address those needs."

Presumably the 49-year-old Morobe, a former Soweto student and United Democratic Front leader, who spent six years in jail, including three on Robben Island, did not intend any contempt towards the poor and miserable. But he unwittingly revealed that those for whom he carries the can, and with whom he must often take tea in the Union Buildings, may be so inured to dealing in numbers with many zeros, they have forgotten what it's like to try and come out on R280 a month or less.

For Quintal and me, the media conference at which Morobe presided on Tuesday was the climax, or anti-climax rather, of two mostly sleepless days.

They began on Sunday at midday when a well-placed source of mine noted, just by the way, that the minister of social welfare had been on Mlambo-Ngcuka's air force Falcon jet to Dubai on December 27 *2.

Why was this riveting? Because, with an adroitness Osama bin Laden might envy, the presidency had been ducking and diving the whole issue ever since the story had emerged.

Three days before I had listened to Mlambo-Ngcuka saying on radio that she had not merely been on holiday (which was the second or third version, I forget which, of her rationale for having flown at taxpayers' expense to the UAE), but that she had also been inspecting cranes - the lifting machines, not birds. She had been doing this, she explained, because she was interested in the "management of large infrastructure projects" and "the empowerment of women".

I could have told the deputy president (for free) that Middle Eastern countries, even ones with so-called enlightened regimes, are not necessarily the best venues for studying the empowerment of women. Besides, having attended the 2003 Hefer commission into allegations that Mlambo-Ngucka's husband was an apartheid-era spy, I had read some of the letters the deputy president sent to Bulelani when he was jailed by the previous regime.

They were lovely because they were so extraordinarily straightforward. Not one word of management-type mumbo-jumbo or obfuscation. So what, I'd wondered, was she now hiding?

By 5pm on Sunday, Quintal, two colleagues and I were working the phones. The spokesperson for the presidency of the Republic of South Africa (Morobe) did not answer his phone for all of Sunday evening and night. Joel Netshitenzhe, the "chief executive officer" of the government communication and information system (GCIS) told a colleague to talk to someone who cared.

Lakela Kaunda, the spokesperson for the minister of social welfare and a former journalist, did not answer her phone at all. (But, since she used to be spokesperson for Jacob Zuma, the former deputy president, I understood why.) Mazibuko-Skweyiya also did not answer her phone.

The only person answering her phone was one of Skweyiya's private secretaries. A courteous woman, she promised that she would find the minister. If not, she would see to it that Kaunda would call me.

Two hours and many phone calls later, Kaunda had still not called me and the secretary told me that the minister was nowhere to be found. What, I asked, if I needed to tell him that the World War Three had just broken out?

One other person was also answering the phone. He was in Dubai where, unfortunately, the time was by then 2am. Dikgang Moopeloa, apparently known as "Milo" to his friends (and enemies - the ones who gave me his mobile phone number), the South African ambassador to the UAE, was not impressed with my having chosen to chat at that hour.

But, being a diplomat, he called me "my brother", told me that he would arrange for Morobe to call me immediately (Morobe never did), and even told me that he was 100 percent certain that Skweyiya had not been in the UAE.

"How could he have been?" asked Milo, a man also given to rhetorical questions. "He was acting president at the time, wasn't he, and could not therefore have left South Africa, could he?"

It started looking as though the minister had not been on the flight. Still, by Monday morning Quintal and I had established independently of one another that, even if he had not, his wife certainly had been, and that the whole party had been guests of the UAE government.

Quintal also established that the minister had not been acting president on December 27. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the minister of health, had been, although the ministry of health was a bit vague about the matter.

And still no one was taking any calls - or, if they were, they were not saying anything except "hello" and "goodbye". By midday Monday, Quintal had established that the deputy president had also taken the children of one of her personal assistants on the flight.

By 3pm Kaunda was text-messaging me - she still would not answer the phone - that she could say "on the record" that Skweyiya had not been on the flight. At last, more than 36 hours after the little storm broke, the presidency and GCIS decided that it might be a good idea to hold a press conference to "clarify matters".

Had it taken that long to find out from Mlambo-Ngcuka, Skweyiya and Mazibuko-Skweyiya what had happened, who had gone, and what everyone had been doing? Apparently.

So the news conference was held at 1pm on Tuesday and the assembled hacks had the privilege of listening to Morobe's assurances.

These assurances included the "promise" that neither Ngcuka nor Mazibuko-Skweyiya had pursued personal business interests while on the trip: another comment Morobe may live to rue. We were also told Skweyiya had never been acting president; that this had been a misunderstanding "in the media". I made a mental note to give Milo a call.

We still do not know why the deputy president's PA had to travel in a separate plane - the Falcon carries 14 and, by the presidency's tally, there were 11 on the flight; where Skweyiya was; who the acting president on December 27 actually was; why the deputy president chose the UAE for her end-of-year vacation; and why a wealthy person like Mazibuko-Skweyiya did not pay her own way.

But we do know some things: that the government's spin doctors were caught with their collective trousers and skirts down and ducked for cover in an unseemly and (for the media) frustrating way; that maybe the deputy presidency has gone a little to Mlambo-Ngcuka's head; that maybe someone should check out, and formulate, the recreational expenditure rules for the presidency; and that Morobe needs a quick course in spin-doctoring.

We also know that 11 years into democracy there is apparently some naughtinesses going on in high places: that the previous regime's habit of baantjies vir boeties, favours for friends, is alive and well.

The differences, though, are that the boeties are from a different group of people and that many of them are sussies. Well, that can't be too bad a thing now, can it?

With acknowledgements to Jeremy Gordin and Sunday Independent.


*1  The torture never stops.

*2  Get the SAAF's passenger list and flight plan for this flight : The torture never stops.