Welcome to the batshit republic where things smell rather foul

We need industrial-strength air freshener to cover the strong whiff coming from our politicians and officials.

Bhekisisa Mncube is an author and columnist who won the national 2024 Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Award for columns/editorials, as well as the same category at the regional 2020 Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards.

Ah, Chief Dwasaho! At last, South Africa has found something we can claim to have mastered: the English language. Not its tenses, not the king’s English, not even subject-verb agreement. We have mastered its shits.

Dogshit. Bullshit. Horseshit. Batshit. Chickenshit. Jack shit. Holy shit. Hot shit. Tough shit.

And now, courtesy of former Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (Idac) boss advocate Andrea Johnson, we have the phrase that may yet qualify as the official description of the Gupta Republic: shit show.

The Madlanga Commission heard a recorded conversation in which Johnson reportedly referred to the inquiry as precisely that while speaking to state advocate Drushantha Ramsamy. There was also, according to the evidence, talk of leaving the country if the summons came knocking.

Holy shit, Comrade Leadership. The profanity is the least offensive part. We are South Africans. We survived apartheid, State Capture, load shedding, potholes and political press conferences beginning 120 minutes late. A naughty word will not finish us.

What should worry us is the chickenshit instinct to run from accountability and then complain that accountability has become a shit show. Johnson is gone from Idac. Fine. Tough shit. But resignation must not become the Gupta Republic’s giant toilet brush: somebody makes a mess, somebody leaves office, a spokesperson announces “continuity”, and everyone pretends the floor is clean.

Speaking of turds requiring constant ­polishing, uBaba’s (Jacob Zuma’s) MK ­party is restructuring again. And again. And again.

The MK party changes leadership with the confidence of people changing socks and underwear at the same time. Secretaries-general come and go. Task teams are born, renamed, abolished and reincarnated. Duduzane Zuma rises. The Duduzane part is the only thing that makes political sense, a Zuma to inherit a Zuma stokvel. Tony Yengeni arrives. Others (John Hlophe) move sideways, downwards or towards the nearest exit.

At this rate, MK does not need an organogram. It needs the electronic departures board at OR Tambo International Airport.

Across the much-vaunted (by investors) Government of National Unity (GNU) fence, the DA has its own flavour of political manure. Ryan Coetzee, once the party’s great ­strategist, reportedly helped steer the DA into the GNU while running Dubai-based ­Consulum, which later received a lucrative contract to advise the party’s operation in government.

The DA denies a conflict of interest or buddy-buddy procurement. Yet the DA’s former leader, John “Vuli Gate” Steenhuisen, still managed to turn the blue machine into dogshit.