Madiba’s Teflon reputation under new attack

Madiba’s Teflon reputation is under new attack, with 15 people arrested for fraud arising from his 2013 funeral, while scandal rocks the Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF).

Teflon is a coating used on cooking pans to prevent food from sticking. The term, Teflon president, was first used in 1983 against America’s Ronald Reagan, who could do no wrong.

So it was with Madiba. Neither the multibillion-rand arms deal, nor democratic South Africa’s original sin, Sarafina II, which both started on his watch, dented his reputation.

Nor was an eyebrow raised when Madiba gave Jacob Zuma R1 million in June 2005, shortly after Zuma was dismissed as deputy president.

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This was after the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) announced it would charge Zuma with corruption.

Two years earlier, NPA head Bulelani Ngcuka said there was a prima facie corruption case against Zuma.

So, there was already a stench around JZ. None of this stuck to Teflon Madiba.

Even as we watch Zuma now defy the highest court, few will remember Madiba had any role in the progress of the constitutional delinquent.

In a recent Daily Maverick article, Jessie Duarte reflected: “What would Mandela do?”

In this instance, perhaps he’d give Zuma more moral and financial support. Who knows?

The latest Sunday Times disclosed that both the chief executive officer and the chief operating officer of the NMF were on “special leave”.

Senior people, handsomely paid to promote Madiba’s legacy, are accused of splurging donors’ millions on “glitz and glam” instead of helping the poor, as Madiba would presumably have wanted.

READ MORE: Here are the ANC bigwigs accused of scamming Buffalo City

Shortly after Madiba’s death, there was a whiff of impropriety around the funeral. More than seven years later, 15 accused have finally been arrested.

The suspects are accused of stealing via irregular tender processes.

Same procedure as always. From former ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema’s days at On-Point Engineering, to the latest Covid-19 personal protective equipment cases, tenderpreneurs do it irregularly.

In 1995, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma established a benchmark with Sarafina II, which Gareth van Onselen once described as “arguably the new SA’s defining corruption scandal”.

In Business Day in 2016, Van Onselen said Sarafina II “set the template for so much ANC graft to follow, from crooked tenders and the lack of consequences, to the acquiescence of parliament before an ANC majority”.

Think arms deal (Madiba’s presidency, then Thabo Mbeki’s). Think Nkandla and State Capture (Zuma’s presidency).

They are variations on a theme which runs through the 2013 funeral crookery to the shadow now looming over the
Nelson Mandela Foundation.

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There is no “good ANC”. The party’s core belief is not democratic centralism as Duarte avers.

What drives the ANC is the “our time to eat” philosophy, which has corrupted the heart and soul of the organisation.
Teflon can protect against what’s outside.

But as John Lennon sang, “One thing you can’t hide, is when you’re crippled inside”.

In Zuma, and Ace Magashule, and funeral thieves, and foundation fiddlers, and MK veterans bizarrely “marching”, and the semi-paralysed Cyril Ramaphosa, we are witnessing the ANC staggering towards its grave.

Teflon or not, Africa’s oldest liberation movement has come unstuck. Badly.

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