Kant of the Year: Busisiwe Mkhwebane comes back to rock Parliament with her EFF studs

The winner of this year’s Kant of the Year, beating England flanker Tom Curry and TikTok “doctor” Matthew Lani, is EFF MP Busisiwe Mkhwebane.

This category was specially created for individuals whose behaviour falls short of Villain of the Year but who have, in some way, acted detrimentally, way out of any rational bounds.

Mkhwebane took top honours as Villain of the Year in 2022 for her singular contribution, alongside her co-conspirators, to the waste of millions in taxpayers’ money and dragging the Office of the Public Protector through multiple scandals.

Read more in Daily Maverick: People of the Year 2023: The awesome, awful and truly evil

A former State Security Agency analyst, Mkhwebane has been at the centre of the State Capture project from the moment she was appointed in October 2016 by former president Jacob Zuma.

Henceforth she would not be out of the headlines – or a courtroom – in the country until the vote in Parliament this year to have her step down, and that in itself was a dragged-out piece of Stalingrad strategy.

The damage to both the institution and the careers of many who opposed Mkhwebane remains immeasurable.

From the start, she unlawfully enjoyed a rent-free stay in the ​​Bryntirion ministerial estate in Pretoria, reserved for ministers and their deputies – the individuals over whom she supposedly had oversight. This set taxpayers back about R4-million.



That EFF leader Julius Malema labelled her “a Gupta puppet” and “a spy”, way back then, nary touched moral sides when Mkhwebane, freshly impeached in October, joined the party.

Booted out without benefits, Mkhwebane was left standing in her R15,000 Valentino Rockstud sandals and swapped them for a domestic worker’s outfit when she was sworn in as an EFF member of Parliament.

Prior to this and mid-impeachment, her handsomely paid advocate, former EFF national chairperson Dali Mpofu, accompanied her to a series of bizarre press conferences attended by media organisations that had never been heard of before.

There she proclaimed her victimhood, her mission from the heavens and her commitment to the country’s poor – just not the farmers who were meant to benefit from the Estina dairy project in the Free State.

Mkhwebane and her husband, David Skosana, also took 2023 to new lows when they leaked WhatsApp messages and voice clips from former Cabinet minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson about alleged bribes being sought by ANC members.

In one of them, Joemat-Pettersson pleaded with Skosana not to expose her as “it would be the end of me”. And it was. She died a short while later in unexplained circumstances at her Cape Town home. She was 59.

Down but not out, Mkhwebane is bound to be in the running for several 2024 categories as South Africa swings into election mode and politicians think the populace are chess pieces to be played with.

Mkhwebane is no doubt going to go out on the campaign trail for the Champagne Fascists, so look out for the bulletproof, heavily protected blue light convoys as she moves among “our people”.

A worthy winner indeed. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.