ANC conscience was captured and taken to Dubai

I had just finished filling my coffee mug with a triple slug of Three Ships (until my ship comes in, that’s all I can afford) when a statuesque blonde walked into the office.

Her superstructure arrived some time before the rest of her … Not being a private eye like Paul O’Sullivan (who gets to fly business class to London), I seldom get to see this class of broad. She tossed a brown envelope on to the pile of newspapers on my desk. I tore it open … and when I looked up, she’d gone.

Damn. There was a single piece of white paper which said: “The ANC’s conscience is missing. Find it. Before the December conference.”

The page contained a website address for a “crowdfunding” site which would pay my expenses. I love a challenge and, in the world of investigations, they don’t come any tougher than this.

I called my contact at the Hawks.

“Man, you know I can’t talk to you. Before he left, Berning Ntlemeza banned any police officer from talking to private dicks…”

The phone went dead. I was on my own.

Next, I called an ANC stalwart.

“Are you still alive?” he asked, to which I replied: “I could say the same to you, chief.” But he talked. The ANC’s conscience had last been seen in public in about 1997, when it was walking along next to Nelson Mandela.

It was seen briefly after that in the company of Thabo Mbeki, but it had started muttering things like “Aids is a Western conspiracy,” so many people avoided it. The trail went cold.

So I went to the offices of the South African Communist Party. It took me half an hour to find a space in their parking garage, because Mercs, BMWs and Range Rovers are big vehicles. My contact, Red Head, said the ANC conscience made a brief appearance at the Polokwane conference in 2007, but Julius Malema and the youth league threatened to give it a klap so it spent its time chatting to the waiters at the gala banquet.

It was lurking by the toilets when Jacob Zuma was elected the new ANC leader. It stayed away from Mangaung in 2012 and, when I spoke to Mangosuthu Buthelezi, he told me his spies had seen it living in one of the rondavels next to the fire pool at Nkandla.

For a while, as Thuli Madonsela started her investigations, the ANC conscience surfaced again. It had given up drinking Blue Label and was reading the constitution, passed on to it by Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng.

Then I got a WhatsApp message from an unknown number.

“#GuptaLeaks shows the conscience was captured and taken to Dubai,” it said.

I booked a suite at the Oberoi Hotel, telling them I was with Prasa and that Atul would pick up the tab. Then I got on a plane. As I got out of the limo at the hotel, there in the lobby, I saw the ANC conscience. It was sipping champagne and eating caviar, surrounded by jewel-bedecked, beautiful women. I strode over.

“You can’t do this!” I yelled, not worried about blowing my cover. “You’ve got to come home for the conference!” It looked at me: “How much will you pay me?”

Some jobs are just too hard. Sometimes you fail. That’s why I drink too much cheap whisky out of a coffee cup.

Citizen acting deputy editor Brendan Seery.