Card-playing Dudu is up for a fight

Dudu Myeni could have been a dealer at a blackjack table in a casino, so many cards did she play yesterday during her “evidence” to the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.

There was the race card, the gender card, the victim card and – last but not least – the conspiracy card.

According to her, she would not be on the witness stand before the commission and “found guilty” as she put it, if she was white.

She was there because she was a friend of former president Jacob Zuma, himself the target of some nebulous gang of plotters.

It’s just the sort of diversion tactic which came straight from the playbook of London spin-doctoring firm Bell Pottinger, which helped construct the “radical economic transformation” narrative on behalf of Zuma and his fellow travellers as the real conspiracy, that of state capture, unfolded.

But Myeni went further to, at least prima facie, violate provisions of the Act which brought the commission into existence.

Whether deliberately or not, she revealed, many times, the identity of a witness known as “Mister X”. Commission chair Judge Raymond Zondo had earlier ordered that his identity not be revealed through fear for his life and that of his family.

Zondo told Myeni: “I am disappointed, I didn’t expect this from you. If somebody disrespects an order that I have made it seems to me that the person disrespects me as well.”

Evidence leader advocate Kate Hofmeyr argued that Myeni had breached Section 5 of the Commissions Act by “wilfully” obstructing it.

Those issues may well attract a sanction for Myeni but, more important, is the bigger picture of what her conduct may portray.

She and others in the Zuma camp are clearly preparing for a long, drawn-out fight…by fair means or foul.

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