If there is anything elections in the 2000s have taught us, it is this: few of us can claim to have elected a leader we did not know.
In the run-up to 2009, Jacob Zuma illustrated in no uncertain terms that he owed his loyalty to private interests.
He took money from Schabir Shaik, slept with his friend’s daughter, showered after having sex with an HIV-positive person because he said that would cleanse him, and was beholden to a whole train of business and political interests.
So, those who voted for him in 2009 must not tell us they did not know what was coming. They knew.
When the Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2024, they cannot claim they did not know that the man was a lying, sexist, bigot.
In the run-up to his first term in 2016, information had emerged about his utterances about grabbing women by their private parts and all sorts of other terrible shenanigans.
The Washington Post tracked his lying and concluded that he made an unprecedented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term.
On average, the man lied an astonishing 21 times per day.
So, no Trump voter can claim they did not know what they were voting for. He showed them.
Which brings me to Midrand, SA.
Last week, the Daily Maverick revealed that Deputy President Paul Mashatile and his motorcade are causing havoc in his neighbourhood as he often and consistently drives against traffic on one-way sections of the road to his house.
He gnarls up the flow of cars and forces motorists (driving legally on the right side of the road) aside during peak-hour congestion.
This happens with Mashatile in his car and sometimes when he is not in the car, according to residents.
When asked about this, Mashatile’s spokesperson Keith Khoza said he could not speak on behalf of the deputy president’s motorcade drivers and that anyone witnessing the transgression and expressing concerns about traffic violations should report these to the SA Police Service.
If you are shaking your head in shock, shame and disgust, then please join the queue.
A real leader, a servant leader, and indeed a law-abiding citizen, would have bent over backwards to say: “Driving against traffic is a violation of the law and should not be undertaken by anyone, let alone the deputy president or his security detail.
“The deputy president apologises for past transgressions and has instructed the SAPS and the senior managers of his security detail to ensure that this never happens again.”
That would have been the end of it.
Instead, you have a man who wants to be president of the ANC — an organisation that used to pride itself as “the movement of the people” — and of the country deflecting from taking responsibility for his actions by telling irate residents to report his transgression to the police.
He does not get it that this is not just about him breaking the law.
It is about his attitude towards the law, towards leadership, towards the idea of politicians being servants of the people.
People want him to behave in a manner that says he understands their traffic problems in the morning and is working to fix them, instead of seeing him breaking the law by driving his blue light convoy against traffic because he is special.
Mashatile’s attitude underlines what South Africans have known for 15 years.
Our politicians, even as they steal the government blind, believe they are doing us a favour.
Entitlement is the order of the day. Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi says he is also inconvenienced by water shortages and boasts that he has to bathe at a hotel.
Health MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko says patients are sleeping on cold floors because they want to.
Gwede Mantashe says youngsters are not in jobs because they are not looking hard enough.
The traffic violations by Mashatile’s motorcades in Midrand may seem small, but they are not.
They tell us everything we need to know about the man who is the frontrunner to succeed President Cyril Ramaphosa in the ANC.
This is a man whose armed and trained bodyguards assaulted civilians in broad daylight on a national highway.
This is a man whose political career over the past 15 years has been marked by annual allegations of tenders rigged for friends and family, who lives in houses he cannot account for, whose children and in-laws pop up in interesting ways in multimillion-rand tender spaces.
This is a man who is often referred to as the head of a group that controls procurement in Gauteng and is known as The Alex Mafia.
If Paul Mashatile becomes president of SA, don’t ever say you did not know.
The traffic incidents in Midrand detailed above tell you everything you need to know about the man and his attitude to servant leadership and to corruption.
We were warned.
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