Indaba yakho istraight? Mahlobo v reality

David Mahlobo is a performer [View this email in your browser]( April 13, 2021 [Mail & Guardian]( [Mail & Guardian]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Instagram]( [YouTube]( Hi there, David Mahlobo is a performer. Some might even say a piss artist. Having managed somehow to fly under the radar for a few years now, Mahlobo is back at it again. To recap: in Parliament Mahlobo oversaw the [signal jamming of cellphones]( in 2015. That same year he said then Public Protector Thuli Madonsela [might be a CIA spy](. Might. He then downplayed the extent of his relationship with Mcebo Dlamini, who was part of the #FeesMustFall protests, after having said Dlamini had been to his house several times. [Then he said he hadn’t](. Remember the [violent demonstrations in Vuwani]( in 2016? Mahlobo claimed [government knew a year in advance]( that they would happen. What did he do to prevent them? Nothing. There were arrests mooted for the chiefs, politicians and businessmen involved in the planning of the protests, he said. Dololo arrests. And then, [Al Jazeera aired a documentary]( which implicated him in the illegal rhino horn trade. On Friday, in a searing performance reminiscent of the paranoia of taking a toke too many, Mahlobo testified before the Zondo commission that an [intelligence operation was underway to frame a judge]( as having taken a bribe from the state. Mahlobo made this sensational claim when he gave his convoluted version of events into the operations of the State Security Agency (SSA). He tried very hard to controvert the January testimony by three members of the SSA, including then acting director-general Loyiso Jafta, which cast him as one of the ministers on whose watch the intelligence service went to hell in a basket. He accused the three witnesses of having a political agenda, and presenting a shred of evidence to support their claims that the agency had been co-opted to further former president Jacob Zuma’s political and personal ends. “As I stand here, without fear or favour or contradiction, I know there is a judge they are trying to frame, when a judge has never received money,” he said. “And I want to place it on record, I have never given an instruction that a judge must be bought, and in terms of my knowledge there is not even a single judge that has been bought.” Jafta notably told the commission there was strong circumstantial evidence that one judge had taken a bribe. The acting director general said the suspicion was the subject of an ongoing investigation. His testimony followed that of former minister, Sydney Mufamadi, who headed a high-level panel into abuses at the SSA and told the commission of a covert operation, codenamed Project Justice, to sway judges to rule in Zuma’s favour. In plain terms this is what happened on Friday. Mahlobo said that he had no knowledge of any sort of attempt by SSA personnel to bribe a judge during his term as state security minister from May 2014 to October 2017. But, he is aware that at present someone is trying to frame a judge to make it appear as though they have accepted a bribe. According to Mahlobo, this is the same person who tried to paint Madonsela as a CIA op. Are we still together? This is where it gets interesting. Before you ask him for proof, he has none because the SSA is a spy agency and they’re not going to leave a neon sign pointing to evidence of their work. We have his word. Having positioned himself as a man of dubious repute, this behaviour is certainly not the work of a man who has no clue how his utterances will be perceived or their subsequent repercussions. He doesn’t know about any bribery during the Zuma years when he was the lord of the flies but he is privy to a plot in the Ramaphosa administration. Allegations of a tainted judiciary play into claims made by Zuma and have been used to impugn the wider judiciary and the Constitutional Court as it prepares to rule on an application to sanction the former president for contempt for defying an order to testify before the commission. This is the same man who Guan Jiang Guang, a self-professed rhino horn trader, said was a close friend of his in an undercover sting for an Al Jazeera documentary — The Poacher’s Pipeline. In secretly filmed footage, Guang showed off cellphone pictures of himself and the minister, and said the minister’s wife was involved in the trade. Mohlobo denied any relationship with the businessman and he has not faced any sort of sanction since the story broke in November 2016. In January 2017, TimesLive reported that the investigation had stalled after the trafficker Mahlobo had been linked to disappeared. We are here now, in part, because of how the intelligence services are closely aligned to the ANC and enmeshed in its factional politics. The constitution insists that the services must be non-partisan. But the executive and the ANC habitually blur the boundary between the party and the state. This malaise is reinforced by the enduring affinity between ANC politicians and intelligence officers who were comrades during the liberation struggle. It’s also relevant that the minister of intelligence and the heads of the services are appointed by the president. So far it’s safe to perceive these appointments as having been based on personal loyalty rather than on professional integrity and loyalty to the constitution. If you’re appalled by the level of obfuscation and how that testimony at the Zondo commission sounds like something Danielle Steele couldn’t conjure up in a fever dream, you must understand the level of daring at play here. Mahlobo has never been called to account for anything. Ever. That’s unlikely to change. Whether the ANC finds some semblance of vertebrae or Mahlobo’s usefulness runs out. Step-aside indeed. Until tomorrow, Kiri Rupiah & Luke Feltham [Subscribe now]( Enjoy The Ampersand? Share it with your friends [Share]( [Share]( [Tweet]( [Tweet]( [Forward]( [Forward]( [Share]( [Share]( Copyright © 2021 Mail & Guardian Media LTD, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in to receive communications from the Mail & Guardian either at our website or by taking out a print subscription. Our mailing address is: Mail & Guardian Media LTD 25 Owl St BraamfonteinJohannesburg, Gauteng 2001 South Africa [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? 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