It doesn’t seem to matter how often it’s repeated, because many of us continue to believe that the grass is greener elsewhere. This is what got Floyd Shivambu to ditch his cushy position as EFF deputy president to join the MK Party led by former president Jacob Zuma.
This is also what got Elon Musk to switch his election campaign funding from the Democrats to the Republicans, choosing to donate $275m (about R4.9bn) to help Donald Trump win the 2024 US elections, all the while promising a further $100m for the 2026 mid-term elections.
EFF leader Julius Malema couldn’t help but mock poor Shivambu — “Yena aya kwini?” (“Where the hell was he going?”) — but anyone could say the same about Musk, who in 2016 threw his significant financial muscle behind the Democrats’ Hillary Clinton in a presidential contest against Trump. It was Trump’s knowledge of Musk’s donation to Clinton that led him to call the richest man on earth “another bullshit artist”.
While the moves by Musk and Shivambu appear feckless and unmoored, they surely believed the grass was greener on the other side.
As they separately lick their wounds this weekend, the big lesson of the week must not be lost on us. Principle should always be our lodestar. We must do whatever we are doing because we are convinced of the correctness of our actions — and never because it seems to serve a short-term interest.
One can argue that Shivambu was tired of being in Malema’s shadow, of being a perpetual deputy. “When is my time going to come” seems to have been the driving force. But why is it about “my time”, and not the bigger question about what the party is achieving?
This weekend — as reality dawns on Shivambu that his “time” in the MKP is not coming any time soon — he must discard all plans to catapult his career to the top of the party. As a backbencher, his best hope must be to make great speeches in parliament in the few minutes his 14% party will allow him. Let’s see how that pans out. Shivambu surely needs all the luck — or is it prayers from his spiritual father from Malawi — he can get.
The social media meltdown was a sad though captivating tale about how we must always be guided by principle, even if it doesn’t immediately serve our interests.
The Pretoria-born Musk, on the other hand, burned millions of dollars on Trump not because he believed in him but because Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden was investigating him. This is why Trump says he is surprised Biden didn’t stop the billions of dollars in subsidies to Musk’s companies.
While money makes the world go round, it wasn’t so much for Musk this week. The social media meltdown was a sad though captivating tale about how we must always be guided by principle, even if it doesn’t immediately serve our interests.
Trump, in the White House, sat on the infamous yellow chair like a sad uncle, telling journalists he was “very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot”. He was helping him not out of principle, but with expectations rooted in what they know best — transactionalism. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. When electric vehicles were taxed, the relationship fell apart.
As the world’s wealthiest man and the world’s most powerful man lobbed insults at each other and engaged in a nihilistic war that ended an unlikely bromance whose expiry date has been a subject of speculation, South Africa’s relationship with Trump and Musk was also set for a reset, to use President Cyril Ramaphosa’s parlance.
Did we not fall over ourselves trying to put together a quick deal for Musk’s Starlink — a satellite firm that wants to do business in South Africa, but without complying with mandatory broad-based BEE regulations?
Communications & digital technologies minister Solly Malatsi had to do some nimble footwork, with the results ensuring Musk’s company had a foot in the door. While Malatsi has protested that his ministerial directions — the effect of which would have been to sidestep BBBEE — were never meant to favour Musk, their timing (a day after Ramaphosa and his entourage returned from a hectic Washington engagement) raised eyebrows. It was quickly condemned by communications portfolio committee chair Khusela Diko and others for making nonsense of empowerment laws.
What happens now that Musk is a different shade of persona non grata at the White House? Would helping Musk now piss off Trump? This is what happens when we are not guided by principle.
Of course, BBBEE has many enemies. We must find a system that helps empower the greatest number of people rather than the select few from connected families. That is obvious. If the Malatsi directives are meant to help us reimagine empowerment in the sector, why not simply overhaul the legislation? This, understandably, is a protracted process. But we don’t have to rush to please Musk any longer, do we?
We need a law zestfully planned and one whose vignette is empowerment of the greatest number. That’s the principle we all agree must be pursued. Our problem is that Malatsi was rushing — with unsurprising support from the DA, and some at the Union Buildings — to please those who temporarily wielded much power, as we sought to please and also to escape censure.
Again, principle escaped us.
This is no different to Shivambu leaving the EFF, hoping a mass exodus would collapse the EFF into the MKP; or to Musk eschewing principle to support a man who labelled him a bullshitter, in the hope money will create friendship where none exists. Now Shivambu is a sad shadow of his former self, just as Musk is used and now discarded.
As a country we hurried up slowly, as it were, to please Musk — and now we don’t know what to do with ourselves. The grass isn't always greener elsewhere. We must learn to place principle ahead of everything else.
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