Johannesburg-It is tempting to christen the year 2021, the year of the looter. Though there was looting before, during and after apartheid, this year, looting almost graduated into a national sport.
Clad in police and army uniforms, the spectators watched the sickening sport, while Master KG’s Jerusalema provided a jarring soundtrack in the background. And the nation watched the whole sordid affair, live on TV.
Debilitating and depressing as these scenes were, they remain some of the defining moments of the year 2021.
Let me hasten to say that the 2021 looter is not without competition. There are several contenders and also pretenders to the throne. They can give the looter a run for his/her loot.
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Take André Marinus de Ruyter, now also known as the jockey of a dead horse called Eskom – his own words. Until now he holds two formidable records: He is the longest-serving Eskom CEO in 15 years and, in 2021, he has presided over the longest period of load shedding ever.
One more record is awaiting him; to put an end to load shedding before load shedding puts an end to us all.
Another possible candidate is Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, the South African corruption confessor extraordinaire. He who tried to keep a straight face even when some witnesses told him that they only remember that they do not remember. But, until he issues a consequential state capture commission report, we may not hand him the coveted crown.
Granted, there are a few South African stars who, out of their sheer individual brilliance, can easily take the prize: The Emmy-nominated actor Thuso Mbedu, Olympyic gold medallist Tatjana Schoenmaker, the Booker Prize-winning novelist Damon Galgut, talented novelist Futhi Ntshingila and the president of the South African Medical Research Council who has become the face of the South African push for vaccines, and vaccination professor Glenda Gray. Anyone of these great compatriots could be named South African of the year.
But you know what, that July week of looting, sticks out like a pimple on the festering face of a mostly ugly year. Not even the 2021 local government elections can displace the looter from the pedestal.
We should not be fooled by the loud bickering going on in some municipalities into thinking that the 2021 local elections were anything other than an underwhelming flop.
Whether the looting orgy was an incident or an accident, an implosion or an explosion, an insurrection or resurrection, who cares.
In any year, the whole episode would leave a bitter taste in the mouth. But this is a Covid-19-ravaged year during which our ambitious vaccination programme fell short of the set targets, the herculean efforts of the Glenda Grays of this world notwithstanding.
And yet, the July looting was only a symptom of a deeper malaise running through the veins of our republic. We are accustomed to the cloak-and-dagger species of looters. They who, like fungi and algae, suck the life even out of the lifeless. They who do not mind stealing from the destitute, the sick, the dying and the dead.
These few characters of ill repute lie embedded in government departments, corporate boardrooms, political parties and in provincial and national legislatures. I include among these multi-national, corporate, tenderpreneur enterprises and government departments who conduct complex looting and extraction of local resources, whatever the dry-cleaned euphemism they may use to describe what they do.
Unless corruption is nipped in the bud, we might slowly become a mafia state.
And still; the July looter who pranced in the public square, is only a copycat, a caricature and a wannabe. The most hardened and sophisticated looters take much more. And they will not hesitate to kill.
Spare a thought for the victims of the looting and the mayhem that accompanies it. While at it, we may wish to remember Moss Phakoe, the man gunned down on March 14 2009 for exposing corruption in the Rustenburg municipality.
We should honour the memory of Jimmy Mohlala – the Mpumalanga whistleblower who was shot dead in January 2009, while using his own body to stop the killers from breaking down the door into his house. There are many others, including all the people who died in the July looting.
We should also honour Babita Deokaran, a key witness in the probe into the R332-million PPE scandal in the Gauteng health department, murdered in broad daylight in August this year. And so, with pain in my heart, I name 2021, the year of the looter.
- From February 2022, Professor Maluleke will join the Tshwane University of Technology as principal and vice-chancellor.
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