‘Paradise’ lost on Mashaba

The truth which evades Action SA leader Herman Mashaba was that former president of the Bophuthatswana homeland Lucas Mangope was corrupt.

The interesting thing about hindsight is that it is not so much, as the saying goes, 20/20 vision, but more of “blindsight” when it comes to political remembrances. That’s what seems to have troubled Action SA leader Herman Mashaba this week, as first in a Sunday Times article and then in public comments, he eulogised former president of the Bophuthatswana homeland Lucas Mangope.

In many respects it reminded me of the old gag about Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy… at least the trains ran on time.

According to Mashaba, Bop was some sort of paradise. There was order, there was investment and kids all went to school in nice neat uniforms. And, presumably, the flowers all bloomed and the birds all sang on command of El Presidente.

Let me say at the outset that some of that is true. While the schools in South African townships were in turmoil in the ’80s because of “pass one, pass all” and “no education before liberation”, many parents with Bop connections shamelessly sent their kids to the homeland, where the schools – even the government ones, never mind the fancy International School in the capital, Mmabatho – were better than their counterparts across the “border.”

There was also the appearance of development as Mangope and his associates in the South African-headquartered construction companies lapped up the billions in subsidies Pretoria was pouring into the supposedly shiningly successful Bantustan.

And no member of the “Constellation of Casinos” – as the homelands were known – would be complete without some business belonging to Sol Kerzner. There were plenty of SA government subsidies going begging then, so Sol was pretty happy – so happy, in fact, that he poured R1 billion into the Lost City.

He got that all back, and then some, thanks to the sweetheart clauses in Section 37 (1) of the then Income Tax Act, which allowed investors to claim back money invested in the homelands.

But the truth which evades Mashaba was that Mangope was corrupt. Back in the late ’70s, he told the homeland’s parliament that there was no need to even put construction projects out to tender, because certain SA civil engineering firms would handle them.

Years later, someone built Mangope a new home in Lehurutse, where the lounge was bigger than the entire home he owned as a school teacher.

It featured a runway and a special reinforced concrete-walled and -roofed shower, which was intended to be a strong room to which he and his family could hide if the house was attacked.

One of the fruits of those years was the grandiose Independence Stadium in Mmabatho, designed by Israeli architect friends of Mangope’s.

There are parts of the stands where spectators have no view of the pitch. It has long since been condemned as unsafe.

Then there was the time Mangope tried to corner drought relief funds channelled through the Thusano Foundation to feed his own cattle. When the foundation’s head, irascible Englishman Colin Campion, pushed back, Mangope hounded him to bankruptcy, legally.

Then there were other splurges of SA taxpayer money on loss-losers like Bop Air (later Sun Air), Agri-Chicks and Bop Recording Studios.

Mangope sued me and my newspapers about half a dozen times for these and other stories about his “paradise”. None of the suits ever went to court.

Nor did we withdraw anything or apologise. Mind you. I was one of the very few SA journalists who was never invited to the official opening of the Lost City. Funny that…