There’s a TikTok video of Julius Mkhwanazi, the infamous Ekurhuleni deputy police chief, appearing before the parliamentary ad hoc committee into police gangsterism — and that’s what it is — that cracks me up each time I watch. It starts with the MKP MP, David Skosana, asking, “Do you have a bachelor’s degree?” To which Mkhwanazi says, “Erm, postgraduate is like a bachelor’s degree,” and when Skosana persists, Mkhwanazi says, “Yes, I did it with them — I started with a certificate.” What follows is mumbo-jumbo. The illogic is frenetic.
Do you have a Bachelors Degree? What is a Bachelors Degree? Is it a Higher Certificate?
Is it NQ Level 6? With which institution did you get your qualification? Julius Mkhonazi has a Bachelor’s Degree#julius#mk#Ba#madlangacommission#comedyvideo While it’s fun to watch Mkhwanazi exposed for the fraud he is, the question that must haunt us is why someone like him was handed state power in the first place.
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This week, the nation asked the same question as many wondered how we ended up with Maj-Gen Lesetja Senona as head of the Hawks in a strategic province like KwaZulu-Natal. Yet, in the rogue’s gallery, Senona and Mkhwanazi are in good company. Think of former police commissioner Bheki Cele, or the alleged fixer who seems to need a fixer himself, Brown Mogotsi, or former Ekurhuleni municipal manager Imogen Mashazi, or ministerial chief of staff Cedrick Nkabinde.
You may add deputy national police commissioner Shadrack Sibiya, “not-academic” Mary de Haas and controversial businessman Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala to this list of ignoble characters. The appointments to key positions of questionable figures must worry us all The appointments to key positions of questionable figures must worry us all. It communicates the disrespect those in charge of government wish upon themselves and us.
If our country respected itself, these questionable figures, for various reasons, would have been kept far away from state power. We can express outrage and indignation over each name we are exposed to, but the uncomfortable truth is that these horrible people didn’t appoint themselves, didn’t keep themselves in office and didn’t protect themselves from investigations. Many others around them, who still exercise public power, chose them, used them, protected them and ensured our taxes were spent on these “Inglourious Basterds” for years.
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