When hard times bring out the hyenas among us

Idrove out of eThekwini, leaving behind friends and family, just as a picture was beginning to emerge of the extent of the damage done by the heavy rains that had kept us all indoors for much of the weekend. Several hours later, back in the City of Gold, I started making calls back home, checking on everybody amid worrying reports of roads being washed away, homes swept away by floods and whole families going missing.

Fortunately for my extended family and friends, all were still safe. A few had found themselves stranded on their way back from work and school. Others were stressed out by the possibility of not having any income by the end of the week as it became clear that returning to work the next day would be impossible as a key route to the industrial parks south of the city had become inaccessible.

Not so fortunate were hundreds of other families who lost loved ones, and thousands more who are now homeless. By the time of going to press, close to 400 people had been reported dead, 300 of them in the eThekwini metro. Hundreds of others have been reported missing and the search and rescue mission has been made more difficult by persistent rains this weekend.

I was on a call with a close friend who lives in Inanda, one of the worst-affected areas, talking about how he was coping with it all, when I made passing mention of the fact that the government had declared the floods a provincial disaster and that at least help was on the way that would lead to the rebuilding of people’s homes and the restoration of damaged infrastructure.

“Bangayebi ke — we hope they don’t loot [the disaster relief funds],” he sighed. It was a sentiment I was to hear many times in the hours and days to come. On social media many were expressing the same concern, with

UDM leader Bantu Holomisa posting a picture of a clan of hyenas looking like they were about to take down their prey. Accompanying the photo were the words: “Not again please! Comrades eyeing emergency funds in KZN!!!”

The Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, which has become a moral voice trying to prick the conscience of those in public office, also made an appeal for funds not to be misused.

Who can blame my friend, Holomisa, the foundation and many others who have expressed this view, for being suspicious?

After all, it is precisely in times of hardship and sorrow that the worst among us in politics and business show that their greed and heartlessness know no bounds.

Who would have thought that the death of the liberation struggle icon and the first president of a nonracial SA, Nelson Mandela, would be seen as “our time to eat” by the very people who go around calling themselves his “comrades”?

If anyone thought that that kind of looting came to an end with the ushering in of the “New Dawn” at Nasrec in December 2017, those hopes were soon dashed as “comrades” and their associates wasted no time in looting the personal protective equipment tenders issued in a bid to cushion the country against the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Even the much-discussed National Health Insurance scheme viewed by many as an important step towards universal health care in SA has not escaped the hyenas. It may not yet have benefited a single poor patient, but it has already been used to line the pockets of individuals with strong political ties through a controversial communications tender.

It is quite telling that nobody in the government, or even in the ruling party, has sought to assure the public that the KwaZulu-Natal flood relief funds will not be seen as an opportunity to loot.

Finance minister Enoch Godongwana, whose department is preparing to release R1bn from the contingency reserve funds to assist families affected by the floods, told this newspaper that an independent agency may be set up to oversee the distribution of the money.

While this is a good step that would go some way in assuring the public that the money does not end up in the wrong hands, it is an indictment of our public service and its credibility in the eyes of citizens.

Then again, in a society where a politician who was forced out of office amid claims of involvement in a R200m corruption saga gets re-elected to a position of power without first having their name cleared in a court of law, what incentive is there for others not to see disasters such as the one that is engulfing KwaZulu-Natal as their “turn to eat”?