Dear Minister Gordhan
Do you remember when you were unceremoniously fired as Finance Minister by Mr Jacob Zuma, I met you just outside Poorthuis in the Parliamentary precinct? We all had tears in our eyes. We all knew just how bad things had got.
Do you remember when you joined the Public Enterprises Committee? I still called you Minister. I had too much respect to call you anything other than that, perhaps because I have manners, but also because I was so proud that you had come to fight side by side with team South Africa to expose State Capture. Do you remember what it felt like when those who had tried to steal Eskom bit by bit sat in front of us and we interrogated them until, in some cases, they were reduced to tears. You coined the phrase, we are here to join the dots. The whole country was completely shocked and utterly delighted that finally, political ideology was put aside, and communists, socialists, conservatives and liberals had come together to fight a great evil. It was quite something. Do you remember how we both used to wait for Ubers when the hearings were over late at night. We always made sure we were safe and no one was left alone in danger. Those we days of good comradery.
Do you remember the night that you were about to give your budget speech and the EFF members stormed the podium. Before your ANC comrades stood up to assist you, I stood by your side. Not just because I felt like I had fought the war of State Capture alongside you, but because my parents taught me manners and I would have defended anyone who was at risk of attack or Fascist behaviour.
Now please understand, I have never bought the constant claims of innocence by ANC Executive members who said they didn’t know State Capture was happening. Quite frankly, you were Finance Minister while the heist was happening, it’s impossible that you DID NOT know what was happening. We have now all joined the dots and realised that the only reason that the Eskom Inquiry in Parliament was allowed to happen was because President Cyril Ramaposa needed all the State Capture information to be aired publicly to ensure a win for him at the ANC Elective Congress. I did however think that you did have interests of South Africa’s electricity crisis at heart. How naive and wrong I was, shame on me! A communist is a communist is a communist. The State shall own everything and the people will never have free will. What a crying shame especially when the solution is on the table.
So, let’s fast forward to today. It was a chance for you and I to really interrogate and go through my Independent Electricity Management Operator (IEMO) Bill piece by piece. Why wouldn’t you debate me in Committee? Why would you not sit face-to-face with me and speak about a Bill you know very well would solve the South African electricity crisis? I’ll tell you why, you knew that I was willing to take my name off the Bill and give it to you. All work and research done, just a change of name … but is wouldn’t have been a communist Bill. It would have been a Bill that introduces freedom of choice, multiple energy supply and most importantly, the end to an archaic monopoly that parasites have fed off of for years and brought the economy of South Africa to it’s knees. You know that face-to-face, you would have had to tell me that you were not actually part of team South Africa. You, like your President, would rather see a weak South Africa than a broken ANC. You know that face-to-face, you would have had to tell me that I had connected the dots, ideology had trumped pragmatism. You couldn’t do it, and it’s why I couldn’t debate my own Bill with you in Parliament.
So Mr Gordhan, you have taught me a lesson I wish I didn’t have to learn. Most people will use you until their need for you is over, then they won’t even have enough respect for you to pick up the phone and discuss a Bill with you. You have taught me that although I always treated you with respect and dignity, your party instructed you to be rude, undignified and not to debate me … and this time, you listened. You taught me to connect the dots. Your communist ideology will continue to capture the state, keep our country in perpetual poverty and ensure that the people are always in need of your assistance, because your government and your ideology Mr Gordhan, cares only for itself, the people are a mere irritation and the State Owned Entities exist to ensure your party always has election funds.
The saddest thing about betray is that it never comes from your enemies.
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