Cammo didn’t hide him

WHAT’S WRONG? HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT ARCHITECTS OF YOUR MISERY

Man who tried to get me into ANC faction fights at Ace court case.

What is wrong with these people? This is a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately, often while watching gangs of teenage “struggle veterans” in badly fitting fatigues and other poor and unemployed folks in party regalia gather outside courtrooms to defend the very architects of their misery.

And by “these people”, I’m not referring to the professional sycophants who would kill off their own mothers for a quick buck and the opportunity to increase their proximity to power (here’s looking at you, Carl). I’m referring to the ordinary rank-and-file members of the ANC.

These are the very same people who are worst affected by the follies of the Jacob Zuma years. These are the people who have to absorb the losses in economic growth created by years of looting and mismanagement.

The ones who go to bed in cold, dark homes, due to the inability of our state power utility to do the single job it has been created and funded to the tune of hundreds of billions to do.

It is these same people who are incapable of putting food on the table, in a country where 30% of the population is unemployed and 49% live under the upper poverty line, while the leaders they defend drive around in luxury cars, paid for with tax money, and their children holiday in Dubai with the Guptas.

So, yeah… “WTF is wrong with these people?” I asked myself again on Friday morning, while watching a grown man humiliate himself in Bloemfontein, in support of his glorious leaders.

But then in the corner of my screen I saw a familiar face, and it all started to make a little more sense. The face was that of a university acquaintance. Let’s just call him Motaung.

Back when I was a journalist in Bloemfontein, Motaung suddenly reached out to me, and asked if he and his business partner could come pay me a visit, as they had a proposal for me.

My anti-MLM sensor automatically kicked in, and I told him that I wasn’t interested in trading forex, binary options, or investing in his essential oils business.

He assured me it was a legitimate business idea and they thought I would be the perfect person to join their company.

So, the meeting happened, and I was given a glimpse into the inner workings of how business is done in the dirty world of factional politics. This was shortly before the ANC’s Mangaung conference in December 2012, and there was a battle waging in the province between current ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule and a group of dissidents referred to as the Regime Change faction.

Motaung and his partner’s business idea basically boiled down to this: they would feed me misinformation and dirt on Magashule, which I would have published via my then employer’s television and online platforms, as well as on a new media platform they planned to create and which I was expected to edit.

The idea behind all of this was that they would help see the undoing of Magashule’s reign in the Free State, while setting up alternative misinformation channels to the network of yellow rags and Bell Pottinger-esque trash media which Magashule was said to be running in the province at the time.

The expectation was that this would set us up to take over from the Magashule camp once the Regime Changers elected their premier, and we would all be kneedeep in the dirty money.

I naturally told them to go to hell...

The leaders they defend drive in luxury cars