SA's sickening cesspool of corruption only deepens with Mkhwebane as an MP

Busisiwe Mkhwebane, the disgraced former public protector fired for incompetence and misuse of her powers, is now an honourable member of parliament. It'd be funny if it weren't such a sad development. She couldn't cut it as public protector, which apparently makes her good enough to be an MP. South Africa is indeed a country of endless possibilities. The jokes just keep writing themselves.

She will now be a colleague of the MPs who voted her out of office. Seated across the aisle, one suspects she'll be tempted to gloat and goad her erstwhile tormentors. She will certainly have to earn her stripes by throwing a few scud missiles in the direction of her enemies. No expert knowledge or skill is required — just a loud voice and the ability to make a nuisance of oneself will do. She looked ridiculous in that apron. Julius Malema described her as “a Gupta puppet straight out of the Gupta kitchen” before warming to her.

Maybe we shouldn't begrudge her the good fortune. After all, she's finally landed where she belongs and won't feel at all out of place. This parliament is awash with dimwits who've turned it into a circus, a laughing stock where buffoonery reigns. To qualify to be an MP, it seems, you should have either achieved nothing in life or failed miserably in whatever you attempted to do. Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula is another prime example. Her whole career is littered with mess-ups that seemingly made her the perfect candidate to be elevated to speaker. And no sooner had she taken up her new position than the National Assembly building was gutted by a fire. Some achievement.

Mkhwebane is in good company. She earned notoriety — and vociferous support from some quarters — from her sheer incompetence and misguided use of her powers as public protector. This was apparently seen by some as the heroic exploits of a fearless woman prepared to take on the might of the state. But in fact she was often out of her depth, and at times seemed utterly disengaged from reality. Despite her numerous cock-ups, she thinks the world of herself and isn't shy to let anyone know it. At least now she's in the bosom of the people who gifted us this misfit public protector who spent most of her time — and our hard-earned taxes — protecting and defending herself. In the process, she gutted perhaps the only constitutional body that actually fulfilled its mandate — a rare jewel in an otherwise depressing miasma of incompetence and corruption. Maybe parliament is the last resort for Mkhwebane. She has to eat, after all. No-one would have hired her after her stellar performance as public protector.

But it’s frankly sickening that parliament — the crowning glory of our democracy, achieved at great sacrifice — has been reduced to something akin to a stokvel where favoured cronies, with no discernible skill or expertise, are hand-picked and rewarded with cushy jobs and fat salaries. It's a paradise where — without a single vote cast in their favour — shysters, grifters and looters go to have a good time. Mkhwebane is certainly not the only beneficiary, and the EFF are not the only culprits. But this sort of thing debases parliament, bringing into disrepute our entire democratic system, which we laughably promote as one of the best in the world. There's no public benefit here — only a shameless abuse of the system to serve the interests of insiders.

Parliament has been reduced to something akin to a stokvel where favoured cronies, with no discernible skill or expertise, are hand-picked and rewarded with cushy jobs and fat salaries

—  Barney Mthombothi

But the sad thing is that it's perfectly legitimate under our world-class constitutional order. South Africa's electoral system — the unfinished business of the post-apartheid era — has given rise to our parliamentary one, which has been abused by those in power to feather their own nests. The current arrangement gives all the power to political parties to decide who goes to parliament. In fact, it is wrong to refer to our MPs as public representatives because they're really party appointees selected by, and therefore beholden to, the political organisation they belong to. They do and say what their party wants them to. Their agency, or even their conscience, doesn't come into it.

They don't have to canvass for support, and they probably wouldn't recognise a vote even if they were to collide with one. The party commands, and they obey. They are supplicants, if not hostages. Which is why Julius Malema sees fit to remove an innocent MP to make room for the likes of Mkhwebane and Jimmy Manyi. During the many no-confidence votes against Jacob Zuma, it was Gwede Mantashe as ANC secretary-general who whipped the party's MPs into line. And it was Fikile Mbalula who recently gave MPs stern instructions to vote for Kholeka Gcaleka as the new public protector.

At the heart of the malaise that afflicts this nation — corruption, incompetence, and so on — is the lack of accountability in our political system. The parties hold all the aces, and the voter — the critical player in a democracy, whose interests should be paramount — has been almost completely sidelined. The role of voters, it seems, is simply to give parties a blank cheque at every election.

It's quite incredible that, until a Constitutional Court judgment three years ago, individuals could not stand in an election unless they were members of a political party. However, the bill signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa in April this year, while a marginal improvement on the previous state of affairs, has left the landscape heavily skewed in favour of political parties and is likely to be declared invalid by the apex court. The dilemma for the country is that it is the parties, the main beneficiaries of the current regime, that are expected to reform or destroy it. So far, they have shown reluctance to do this.

Until an equitable electoral system is put in place, the ability of voters to hold those in power accountable will remain a pipe dream — and the cesspool of malfeasance will simply deepen.