In a development that has sent the chattering classes of Cape Town into paroxysms of both outrage and barely concealed mirth, South Africa has found itself embroiled in a new scandal. It’s a peculiar concoction, this one: a generous dollop of gifts, a generous line of cocaine, and a police inquiry that would make a Keystone Kop blush. Barnaby ‘Biff’ Thistlethwaite reports from a hotel bar in Joburg, where the gin flows freely and the truth flows even looser.
The narrative, as far as one can glean through the fog of official denial and leaky press conferences, begins with “gifts.” Gifts, presumably, given with the sort of innocent bonhomie that only emerges when someone is building a major new airport terminal. The sort of gifts that might include a Rolex, a weekend in Zanzibar, or perhaps a new BMW for the minister’s teenage son whose driving test has been mysteriously expedited. But this is no mere domestic affair. Oh no, the South African Police Service, in its infinite wisdom, decided to add a dash of international flavour by conducting a series of cocaine raids that have gone, to put it politely, tits up.
The raids, conducted with all the precision of a hippo in a china shop, have left the public not with a sense of security but with a feeling that the police are less guardians of the peace and more a chaotic theatre troupe performing a farce called “We Pretend to Arrest People.” Apparently, the drugs operation was meant to demonstrate the force’s commitment to fighting the narcotics trade. Instead, it demonstrated their commitment to losing evidence, arresting the wrong people, and handing the opposition a tactical nuclear weapon of embarrassment.
The gifts scandal, meanwhile, has given rise to a new species of politician: the indignant giraffe, neck stretched high as they deny any knowledge of the envelopes stuffed into their briefcases. One can almost hear the chorus: “These gifts were cultural. They were given in the spirit of ubuntu.” Ubuntu, for the uninitiated, is the African philosophy of interconnectedness that somehow does not cover accepting a brand new Land Cruiser from a company that just won a government contract.
But let us not be too hasty in our judgment. After all, this is South Africa, a nation that has perfected the art of the spectacular fail. The police inquiry into both scandals is currently staffed by the same officers who, one imagines, have a sideline in comedy. Their first act? Losing the list of who was meant to be investigated. Their second act? Finding the list but discovering it was written in invisible ink. Their third act? Blaming the whole mess on a rogue intern who has since fled to Namibia.
Meanwhile, the cocaine raids have produced a bumper crop of comedic gold. In one instance, police raided a farmhouse only to find not drugs but a bewildered family watching television. The father, a retired maths teacher, offered them tea and biscuits. They took the biscuits. In another raid, officers seized several kilograms of what they swore was cocaine, only for lab tests to reveal it was actually washing powder. The prevailing theory is that the police were trying to do the nation’s laundry.
The real tragedy, of course, is not the comedy of errors but the erosion of trust. The South African public, already hardened to tales of corruption and ineptitude, now views their police force with the same affection one reserves for a persistent wasp at a picnic. And the politicians? They continue to posture, each trying to outdo the other in feigned outrage, all while their fingers are very much in the till.
As I sit here, nursing a gin that tastes faintly of corruption and regret, I am reminded of the words of a great philosopher: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you’re probably not paying attention.” Such is the state of South African policing and governance. The gifts scandal and the botched cocaine raids are but two heads of a hydra, a beast that is fed by cynicism and watered by incompetence.
In the end, one can only laugh. It is either that or weep into one’s drink. And as I look around this hotel bar, I see plenty of weavers. But the laughter, I suspect, will be the last thing to go. South Africa, after all, is a country that can turn a drug bust into a sitcom and a corruption scandal into a national joke. Long may it reign, even as the world watches, sniggering into its own cocktail.
