A kick in the shed – where’s our airwaves-grabbing pandemic Prez when you need him?

Oh, the outpouring of anger and despair! The grief, the rage! South Africa’s failing state, coupled with the rising price of petrol and, well, everything else, has the nation in a state. And that’s just on Facebook. I shudder to think what’s happening on Twitter.

And, amid that outpouring, a consistent theme arises: “Why can’t the President talk to us?” many wonder. “Why can’t he take us into his confidence?” they moan, in that charmingly old-fashioned phrase. They perhaps overrate the power of metaphor, or misunderstand the implications, because it’s not clear that the nation really wants to be taken into the President’s confidence – being sucked in there is the closest one could come to being smothered in a vat of margarine.

Still, we want to be addressed. We want some comfort, some hope that there’s a light at the end of the load shedding tunnel – and that it’s not just one of those solar-powered camping lights we’re using to help us find the emergency gas cooker when the power’s off.

We want to be spoken to, and we want to be spoken to nicely. We don’t want one of those long letters from the President, in which he elaborates at almost Mbekian length on the most screamingly obvious things a president can say or promise. No, we want something short, something blunt, something honest. Anything.

Funny how when the pandemic was at its worst you practically couldn’t get the President and his advisers off the airwaves. No, then they had plenty to say. I suppose it was because they had new laws and rules to promulgate, and nothing gladdens the heart of a politician committed to the rule of law more than a law.

(I exclude Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma from this rubric; nothing gladdens her heart more than being able to restrict the nation’s pleasures and addictions, and to do it in the manner of a thin-lipped Stalinist dictator. One wonders how she’s getting on with dictating good governance to the municipalities that haven’t paid their bills in 10 years.)

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People were rather upset that, just as South Africa reached Stage 6 load shedding, the President was in Davos or somewhere European making nice with those rich people he so desperately wants to invest in South Africa, not that he has much of an investment case to make. People were upset that he had nothing to say to the nation about Stage 6. Had he not had time to charge his phone? Or was he just having so much fun he couldn’t bear to shatter the mood?

He could have pointed out that Stage 6 is not, in fact, all-encompassing. It’s not like the whole of South Africa is sitting in Stage 6 darkness at any one moment. Not at all. In Eskom’s schedules of the past week or two, obviously devised by someone who thinks in Excel spreadsheets, we moved seamlessly between Stage 2, Stage 4 and Stage 6, with an unexpected smattering of Stage 5, at intervals that can only be determined by throwing the bones. Just as we’ve got over being told we’re moving to Stage 6, and the lights will be out from 4pm to 6.30pm, we’re told that actually we’re moving to Stage 4 at 6pm, so the lights will stay off till 8.30pm.

Okay, so maybe that wouldn’t have been the right thing for the President to address, but he could have said something. He could have said: “We’re working on it!” or “We have solutions!” – except the government has said that so often before that just hearing those words is enough to send one into a state of despair. Maybe he could have just said: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself!”

That would have made us all feel better, not least because he’d said something presidential. But there’s also a strong feeling in the heart of the nation that the President could have been more informative on the subject of all that cash that was stolen, part-returned, not properly investigated, et cetera, at or from his luxury cattle ranch somewhere up there near the Limpopo River, on or about a date about a million years ago but still very much alive in the mind of Arthur “Slush Fund” Fraser.

Hey, Prez, you’re being charged with not reporting a crime to the police, with ordering a cover-up, and you’re being accused of some forex violations (talk about First World problems!), but all you can say is: “Well, yes, the robbery did take place, and I told my presidential guard about it, and they did something, not sure what, and besides it wasn’t nearly as much as $4-million.”

Actually, the President did mention this issue, but it was in Parliament, where saying nothing in the guise of something is a fine art. Unless they dress up in red overalls and sing old Struggle songs while engaging in light fisticuffs with the DA, it’s usually unclear what MPs are trying to express.

But the President did say that he wouldn’t respond to rumour, speculation or fantasy, but would hold his peace on “Farmgate” until the processes of the law had run their course. That is, when the police manage to find a gap between beating up shack dwellers and extorting a few cents from homeless people they will surely get right on to this matter and solve all those connected crimes in the blink of an eye.

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That was a badly needed laugh for the nation, as was Minister of Cops and Hats Bheki Cele’s response to the President’s words: he said the police would not rest in their search for the truth until they, er, um, reached the truth, ascertained the truth and then, and only then, washed their hands of it. It was a laugh be­cause, well, we all know that the processes of the law move at the pace of a 200-year-old tortoise that has had its back legs amputated so the gangrene doesn’t get to its brain. That gives the Prez plenty of time to think of a good excuse for having all that money, in cash dollars, hidden in a sofa but clearly not hidden well enough.

And, yes, Mr President, we need you to come up with your best possible exculpatory narrative because we really don’t want to have to believe you’re involved in some skulduggery, even if it’s a drop in the ocean of skulduggery that has brought South Africa to its knees and caused the Zondo Commission to submit a report about 90,000 pages long.

Come on, Prezzy. After the blackout, we want the whitewash. DM168

Shaun de Waal is a writer and editor.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.