Eskom inquiry’s lying cast

J Edgar Hoover, the legendary first director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, once summed up the lessons learnt in his 40 years of law enforcement by proffering that truth telling is the key to responsible citizenship.

While he had interacted with criminal minds of almost every stripe during the period, he noted that no matter their stripe they all had one thing in common: every one of them was a liar.

I have watched with great incredulity the performance of some actors at Parliament’s Eskom inquiry. At times it seems like a diabolic circus. Death threats are alleged to have been bandied around. A minister in the security cluster is alleged to have asked the evidence leader to name his price with a view to frustrating the process. Earth-shaking credible and corroborating evidence have been led by multiple witnesses.

Supporting documentation has been presented, and some that was requested from Eskom was denied and then furnished. The premature closure of the case against suspended CEO Matshela Koko because witnesses failed to show up to testify was simply the latest twist in one of the inquiry’s sideshows.

In the main, the accusations are directed against a certain family and identified individuals, all with a recurring theme of subverting due process and profiting massively and illicitly as a result. Yet all are denied — straight-faced, coolly, vigorously at times and sometimes with feigned righteous indignation. One or more of these people are lying.

Watching the repeated denials, obfuscations and the repurposing of facts, it is beginning to feel like a bizarre but compelling art form of high-end evil ingenuity, if it was not so duplicitously criminal. Sadly, all we hear are repeated promises of the establishment of a judicial commission of inquiry. No such inquiry has been instituted. Yet the evidence continues to mount, and someday soon the chickens will come home to roost.

Kola Jolaolu

Cape Town