Letter From Mt Frere: Zukile Majova asks why the calamitous minister of arts, culture and sport seems only to fall upwards after every failure.
There was a time in the ANC when comrades would assure outsiders, confused by the rumblings and infighting in the ANC broad church, that in the end “logic will prevail”.
Those days are long gone. Logic no longer prevails.
Take for instance why Nathi Mthethwa, our unfortunate Minister of Arts, Culture and Sport has survived 14 years as a member of the executive without bringing much to the table.
He was appointed Minister of Safety and Security by Former President Kgalema Motlanthe to appease a Jacob Zuma faction that was still drunk with victory after toppling Thabo Mbeki at the watershed conference in Polokwane in 2007.
Two years earlier in 2005, it was Mthethwa and others who led the KwaZulu-Natal delegation’s 100% Zuluboy campaign designed to save Zuma’s skin at the ANC National General Congress (NGC).
Mbeki had just fired him as his deputy in government citing a corrupt relationship between Zuma and his financial advisor Shabir Schaik.
The NGC was supposed to be a platform for Mbeki to bury Zuma and it became a launch pad for his fight back strategy.
When Zuma became president, Mthethwa became Minister of Police in 2009 and later Minister of Arts and Culture in 2014 up until now.
Mthethwa was in the police portfolio when police opened fire on striking mine workers in Marikana, killing 34 miners and injuring over 80 miners. He survived without even being charged.
Mthethwa is also difficult to fire from cabinet because he and Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula got into cabinet with an ANC Youth League ticket that demanded generational mix in cabinet.
At 55, Mthethwa is regarded as a young minister in Ramaphosa’s cabinet of grannies and grandpas.
Now that Mthethwa has embarrassed the Ramaphosa government with his R22 million Flaggate, the president should simply get rid of him.
But he can’t.
He can’t afford to fire another KZN-born minister after firing disgraced Health Minister Zweli Mkhize for benefiting from the R150 million Digital Vibes communications tender.
And with just six months before the party’s elective conference in December, Ramaphosa can’t afford to wield the axe right now.
Any challenge in Ramaphosa’s grip on power will come from KZN and the president is working hard to secure a second term even if it means keeping some of Zuma’s lieutenants inside his tent.
And so Mthethwa continues to survive as a festering boil on Ramaphosa’s neck.
