A modern morality tale

IN A DIFFERENT era and a different time, the scandal in which Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe finds himself embroiled would have spelt an end not just to a politician’s ambitions, but indeed their career.

Radebe was unmasked by a Sunday newspaper at the weekend as the author of a series of lewd texts to a photographer employed by the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS).

The photographer, Siyasanga Mbambani, is currently suspended pending a disciplinary hearing into insubordination charges.

Mbambani was suspended in March after being accused of acting inappropriately in front of the president and the deputy president.

She claims the charges are spurious, designed to punish her for attracting the attention of her political principals.

It is a saga that will titillate those with an appetite for the salacious and throw a rather large spanner into whatever aspirations Radebe might have had at the ANC’s end-of-year elective conference.

Indeed there are some who wonder at the timing of these revelations and their intended outcome. Others, particularly in the recesses of social media, are having an absolute field day at the minister’s predicament.

It’s not new. In fact, it’s rather tawdry; an older man in a position of power with an eye for a younger, very attractive colleague.

Hollywood has produced countless films on the topic, tabloid newspapers have feasted on indiscretions from the White House to London’s No 10 Downing Street, Paris’s Elysée Palace and many other administrations in between.

During the Cold War, opposing spy agencies even recruited “honey traps” to entrap senior politicians and public servants to betray their country.

This, though, was just a man who should have known better, and a woman, much younger, who should never have been allowed to get into this position. We have written about the culture of blessers and “blessees”; older men trading power and money for affection or just dalliances.

Now it appears to extend all the way to the Union Buildings, to the office of a man many thought was a byword for loyalty and efficiency.

It’s a modern-day morality tale.