‘Rare gem’ Malusi Gigaba is flawed

Before we turn up the volume too much on Malusi Gigaba’s praisesinging (“‘Rare gem’ Gigaba in it to win it”, M&G Online, April 7) let’s remember that this “rare gem”, as home affairs minister, was responsible for overseeing much idiocy and heartache in the great immigrant spousal debacle of 2014-2015.

As a privileged South African, I had the means to take home affairs to court back then and win.

Gigaba saw fit to dispatch a flock of inept state attorneys and officials to attempt to ensure that spouses and children, wrenched from their families, would stay separated. This was all based on illegal directives, which violated human rights, from a deeply flawed immigration directorate.

And, as if that wasn’t good enough, Gigaba saw fit to appeal the judgment against the directorate in every court, losing all the way to the Constitutional Court. I had to have another court order served in 2016 to tell the department to give my wife permanent residence. Yes, people, that’s your tax money hard at work.

This tells me a number of things about the man:

He believes in the infallible, absolute power of the state (whether it’s uBaba’s or the Guptas’);

He has no concern for the poor or unheard in the country, those with

OOno recourse to the law. The principle of his dogma of “statal infallibility” is far more important to him; and

His political ego is far too big to admit mistakes. Fruitless litigation and a bottomless public purse are much better instruments. He needs to read Kathryn Schulz on “why we find it so gratifying to be right and so maddening to be mistaken, and how this attitude toward error corrodes our relationships — whether between family members, colleagues, neighbours or nations”.

Such actions don’t bode well for a man in charge of the national finances.

O