UPSIDE-DOWN STATE OF AFFAIRS

In today’s world, it is the scandal-soaked Gigaba who stands a real chance of becoming a president

Home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba should run for president. After more salacious revelations about his private activities surfaced at the weekend, Gigaba’s life is now a right and proper soap opera — sex scandals, corruption allegations, threats of lawsuits, warring mistresses — and a political party and country are enthralled by it all.

Gigaba would easily win in an election. He has all the right attributes for leadership anywhere in the world these days.

Think about it. Jacob Zuma was accused of rape, impregnated one of his friends’ daughters and had a long-running corruption trial. He won his party’s and the country’s presidency. Twice.

That’s the upside-down world we live in. The villains are the heroes. The dodgy are always winning. The empty cans, those who make the most noise, get listened to by the populace.

It is not just SA that is upside down.

Everywhere in the world now leaders like Thabo Mbeki — the policy wonks — have made way for the soap opera presidents.

On Sunday, Brazil elected into the presidency a racist, homophobic, right-wing nationalist whose entire political career sounds like a soap opera. Jair Bolsonaro, who in a lifetime in politics has failed to put anything meaningful on the table, utters incredible absurdities such as: “I am in favour of torture — you know that.

And the people are in favour of it too.” Sadly, he is probably right.

Think of our Brics brothers. Every year the Russians are subjected to images of Vladimir Putin on a horse, fishing or running bare-chested in the bush. It is the leader as nationalistic soap opera star.

In the UK the country followed another windbag, Nigel Farage, and voted for Brexit.

Then of course there is the ultimate soap opera star, the man who makes the Zumas and the Putins of this world look like amateurs.

US President Donald Trump, a former reality TV star, has it all worked out. He realises that we now live in a world where truth does not matter.

The people want noise, they want constant engagement, whether truth or lies. They want someone who gives them material to engage with all the time.

It’s all entertainment. It’s all about the ratings.

Trump is on Twitter all the time. He is glued to Fox News and tweets, calls the channel or gives it interviews. Crucially, he finds an enemy every time and on every issue. Crime? It must be the foreigners. Bad publicity? It must be the liberal media.

Gigaba fits the bill for future president of SA because there is no doubt that he will be blackmailed by those who wish to manipulate our country’s policies.

Trump is obsequious before Putin because the Russians apparently have kompromat (compromising material) on him. What kind of kompromat?

Well, Trump has been dogged by reports that the Russians are in possession of a video that shows him in the presidential suite at Moscow’s Ritz-carlton hotel, watching two sex workers pee on a bed the Obamas supposedly slept in — all for his enjoyment.

The incident apparently took place in 2013, when Trump was visiting Moscow to attend the Miss Universe pageant.

Former FBI director James Comey claims in his book A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership that Trump asked him to look into the existence of the infamous pee tape.

Way back in the early 2000s many of us political hacks were asking who would succeed the Mbekis and Zumas in the ANC.

Gigaba was one of the thrusting young ANC leaders who was often spoken about as the future of the party.

At the time Gigaba styled himself as a mini-mbeki: he was well-read, erudite and liked to throw a quote or two into his speeches to remind us that he had a postgraduate degree.

That studious Gigaba would not make it in today’s politics.

Instead, it is the scandal-soaked Gigaba of today, the one whom foreign spy agencies hold serious kompromat

on, who stands a real chance of becoming a president.

It’s not his fault, of course. It’s us. We elect such people.

Trump, the ultimate soap opera star, realises the truth does not matter to people: they want noise