Zondo’s spoken, the masks are gone but — just like Covid the ANC remains a threat to our welfare

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TPhenomena such as state capture can, like cancer cells, simply self-replicate

wo events that have dominated — and scarred — our lives for the past several years and are bound to have a major say in the future direction of the country came to some sort of significant milestone, if not conclusion, this week.

Health minister Joe Phaahla scrapped the country’s remaining Covid regulations — restrictions on travel, sports events and other gatherings and, principally, the wearing of masks — thus bringing down the curtain on one of the most painful episodes in our history. And on Wednesday, after a few juvenile cockups, chief justice Raymond Zondo finally delivered the fifth and final tome of his report on state capture to President Cyril Ramaphosa. It’s odd that Ramaphosa should be accepting a report on corruption at a time when he himself is under a cloud, a point that has not been left unremarked on, especially by his myriad enemies.

These are obviously different events or episodes, but they have some similarities on how they were carried and how they ultimately affected and disfigured society. Both exposed the worst of our pathologies. State capture, a uniquely South African phenomenon, was obviously a vile and deliberate act by those in power and their cronies to plunder state resources for their own benefit. There was thievery involved in both. While state capture stole our future, Covid stole our lives. Both also exposed not only government incompetence but corruption as well.

Zondo’s report doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t know already. It is in a sense an attempt to describe the method in the madness. Desmond Tutu once said there’s only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time. State capture is a humongous elephant — an act of mind-boggling daring and deceit. The report seeks to give an idea where the bodies are buried, so to speak, and which villains should be hung, drawn and quartered.

Ramaphosa, beleaguered by his own scandals, says he’ll table recommendations in parliament. It will be fun to watch turkeys voting for Christmas. The report is a stake at the very heart of the ANC. How can a patient be saved when the cancer has spread throughout the body? And some very big beasts in his party are implicated. Cedric Frolick, parliament’s chair of chairs, Gwede Mantashe, the party chairperson, and deputy minister Zizi Kodwa, who is in Ramaphosa’s orbit, are ensnared in the Bosasa debacle, for instance. Even Ramaphosa’s son is embroiled in it.

It will be interesting to see how Ramaphosa pulls this one off — the biggest challenge of his presidency — at a time when he’s at his weakest, hobbled by a scandal seemingly of his own making. He had, after all, failed to jump minor hoops in the past at the time when he had seemed in an unassailable position.

Two years ago he could do no wrong. He oozed authority and enjoyed popular support even as he imposed a swingeing lockdown bound to cost people their jobs. His cabinet, drunk with the powers the state of disaster gave them, rained on his parade — imposing unnecessary restrictions on movement, what to buy, when and which businesses should open. Many of them went under as a result.

Covid is obviously an act of God, but its severity could have been mitigated had the government shown a bit of competence. Many lives were lost needlessly. For instance, it took the government an inordinately long time to acquire the vaccine. It was almost as if after imposing the lockdown the government simply went to sleep. To register for vaccination was another nightmare. Some people registered but never got notification of where or when to be vaccinated.

But despite the best attempts of a few refuseniks the public has, on the whole, been exemplary in following the rules. They got their vaccine and wore their masks. It now feels a bit strange walking into a shop or mall without a mask. There’s the weird feeling that a stranger could suddenly approach you to alert you to your nakedness. Covering our faces has almost become second nature; a mask had become an essential part of our clothing, like putting on one’s pants. It also became a symbol of the dangerous and uncertain times we live in.

Each one of us may have also experienced the strange phenomenon in the past two years of getting acquainted with someone without once having seen their face uncovered.

“So this is how you look like,” a man shouted at an acquaintance as they walked past each other at a shopping mall on Friday. And they laughed about it. It has not always been a laughing matter — there hasn’t been much to enthuse about in recent times.

A mask, so essential in preserving our lives — and our sanity — during the past two years or so, has suddenly lost its utility. It’s become just another piece of cloth. But it is not to be discarded yet. We will have to keep it by our side. There’s still no cure for Covid and we’ll have to learn to live with it. But we know the cure for ANC corruption, the other cancer in our midst. It is the vote. However, we’ve chosen not to use it. And as long as we refuse to do so, phenomena such as state capture will, like cancer cells, simply self-replicate.

Probes such as the Zondo commission can only lay bare the facts, they cannot by themselves wipe out the scourge. But banking on the ANC to get rid of corruption — its lifeblood — is like expecting them to commit hara-kiri. It’s not going to happen.