Flight+of+the+fancy,+Editorial,+Business+Day




 * Business Day, Johannesburg, Editorial, 17 January 2006**

=**Flight of the fancy**=

IF DEPUTY President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has any hopes of a long life in politics, she had better get her act together quickly.

Consider last week. The story breaks that she and her husband and children flew in a military jet to the Gulf over Christmas for a holiday. Then, when that was met with a relatively mild outcry (mainly from political opponents), Mlambo-Ngcuka offered up an incoherent “explanation” of the R500000 excursion: that there were many cranes in the United Arab Emirates and that SA needed to train people.

In other words, she was back-peddling and trying to justify the trip on the grounds that she had done some sort of work on it.

Then her office put out another statement saying that, no, there had been no work done, and that she and her family had merely gone on holiday after all.

Yesterday the reason for the late clarification became clear — the Mlambo-Ngcukas might not have been the only passengers on board.

The Democratic Alliance said yesterday it had reason to believe that Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya and his wife, Thuthukile Mazibuko-Skweyiya, were also on the flight. That raises all sorts of alarm bells as it was Mazibuko-Skweyiya who received a loan in 2003 of R60000 from African National Congress (ANC)-linked “businessman” Sandi Majali after he got R15m from PetroSA, supposedly to buy oil.

Instead, Majali immediately gave R11m of that to the ANC for its 2004 general election campaign, made the loan to Mazibuko-Skweyiya and gave a further R50000 to Mlambo-Ngcuka’s brother, Bonga.

All of this occurred while the current deputy president was minerals and energy minister and politically responsible for PetroSA.

Yesterday the buck was being passed around like hot coals but, essentially, a government spokesman insisted Zola Skweyiya was not on the flight but declined to be as emphatic about his wife.

In which case it would not be entirely hysterical to presume that Mazibuko-Skweyiya was on the flight. Clearly Mazibuko-Skweyiya is a very lucky lady. Government loans, free flights. What next?

Equally disturbing yesterday was the refusal by government officials to comment one way or the other on reports that ANC leader-turned-businessman Saki Macozoma was on the flight. He and the deputy president’s husband, former prosecutions chief Bulelani Ngcuka, are close friends. Well, was he or wasn’t he? Was Mazibuko-Skweyiya on it or not? For government and presidential spokesmen who have made so much of security being why the deputy president needed to take a military plane on holiday in the first place, their apparent ignorance about who was on board is pathetic.

Thus, what was a mildly embarrassing tale of the waste of public money by a senior politician threatens to become a full-blown scandal and to raise very serious doubts about the political judgment and ethics of a woman who could one day be president. President Thabo Mbeki must be tearing his hair out.

Indications are that he knew nothing of the trip. But the mess the presidency is now making of trying to clear up the affair speaks of a real malaise at the top.

Apparently a statement is to be made clearing up the whole thing later this week. This will give officials and politicians time to piece together a plausible spin. But it had also better be the truth because there seems to be no hiding it.

It is too early yet to pass judgment on whether Mbeki’s deputy has become a political liability so soon after being appointed last year. Certainly the affair will have little effect on forthcoming local elections.

But if the deputy president did indeed take her and her husband’s friends along on that expensive jaunt, she can probably forget, already, about becoming president of the republic.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A139525 **