Say no to that breakfast…

The story goes that former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani – revered for his leadership, having become the crisis communication hero in the wake of the 9/11 attack on the US – once refused to let former president Donald Trump buy him breakfast.

As communications experts will attest, without a leadership from the front and a human face in the form of Giuliani, the 9/11 US crisis could not have been better managed.

Dealing with the media is one of the last things many people want to do in a crisis, with some preferring to run for cover with “no comment” – increasing the potential for speculation and misinformation.

Giuliani received a 79% approval rating in polls conducted six weeks after the attack among New York City voters – a dramatic increase over the 36% rating he had received a year earlier.

Reflecting the emotions of many Americans after the attacks, Giuliani would appear sad, angered when briefing the media, resolving to rebuild a shattered New York – yearning for justice to be done.

With an impeccable track record, having led the ’80s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as US attorney for the Southern District of New York, any close association or comparison of Giuliani and Trump, would be unthinkable years later.

The two men were, until recently, chalk and cheese.

With the world of politics not defined by permanent friends, little did we think that years after refusing that Trump breakfast, Giuliani would collaborate with a man whose mission has been about himself above world interests.

Not only did Giuliani take up a brief as Trump’s lawyer, he found himself being in the forefront of peddling gross untruths about the outcome of the recent presidential polls – trying hard to brand the elections as having been stolen to ensure a Joe Biden win.

A voting machine company has filed a billion-dollar lawsuit against Giuliani, accusing him of defamation in what it called his “big lie” campaign about widespread fraud in the polls.

In the run-up to the recent Joe Biden-Kamala Harris inauguration, Trump and allies, who included Giuliani, spent two months denying his defeat – claiming, without evidence, that it was the result of widespread voter fraud.

Giuliani’s alliance of convenience is not exclusive to the US.

South Africa is full of good leaders who have found their integrity compromised trying to please an incumbent rogue president.

Among those, has been former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene – a respectable man with a depth of public finance management – who had to resign after it was exposed at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, that he had made some visits to the Saxonwold Gupta family compound.

Unlike his colleague – former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas – Nene had failed to declare the nature of his sojourns to the infamous family who ran South African affairs from their home during the Jacob Zuma presidency.

Like Giuliani, it took a short while for Nene’s good track record in government to crumble.

Keeping your integrity intact is key.

Brian Sokutu.

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