Skeletons, phantoms and a few more recognisable remains slipped from the closet as Parliament put 14 would-be public protectors through their paces this week.
It was often painful to watch, starting with the first candidate, advocate Michael Mthembu, who is also a judge of the Electoral Court.
Former prosecutor Glynnis Breytenbach got stuck in to cross-questioning before the learned advocate’s behind had even begun to warm his seat.
Why, she wanted to know, had Mthembu not disclosed in the questionnaire sent to each candidate that he had two default judgments against his name.
Mthembu never fully recovered from this opening volley.
No one was spared. Everything from their role in the Struggle to their views on the land question was traversed with the shortlisted 14.
MPs were sometimes taken aback by the responses. Their search for a “fit and proper” candidate would not have led them to expect the reply of the septuagenarian advocate Chris Mokoditwa who, when asked about his age, replied: “I’m fit, I’m a bodybuilder.”
Shebeens, slot machines and traffic offences also came up. MPs seemed less concerned by an accusation levelled at former UDF and ANC activist Jill Oliphant by a Sun City security guard - that she had stolen a cellphone -than with the fact that she had been gambling in the first place.
They were satisfied with her explanation that she had found the cellphone lying unattended and had wanted to hand it in when accosted by the guard, but EFF MP Floyd Shivambu asked wether the people of South Africa be satisfied with “a gambling public protector”.
The heavy hitters faced some of the fiercest questioning. Western Cape Judge Siraj Desai, for example, was grilled at length about “the Mumbai incident” - a 2004 rape accusation which was withdrawn before trial - and his public spats with colleagues.
Deputy national director of public prosecutions Willie Hofmeyr was made to explain his support for the decision - since set aside in court - to withdraw corruption charges against President Jacob Zuma in 2009.
And Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh, director of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre, which sought the arrest of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir when he attended an AU conference in this country last year, was grilled at length about the sources of her funding.
“Is this organisation foreign controlled and foreign run?” asked former Johannesburg mayor and ANC MP Amos Masondo - an accusation to which Ramjathan-Keogh took deep offence.
Most excruciating was the interview of deputy public protector Kevin Malunga, tainted from the start by an apparent suggestion by the State Security Agency that he had misrepresented his qualifications.
A letter from the agency surfaced on the day of the interviews, claiming Malunga had arrived in the country from Zimbabwe only in 2010, while he had listed qualifications obtained here before that date.
It was, said Shivambu, “extremely prejudicial” to Malunga not to have informed him of this letter before the interview, while other MPs cried sabotage.
It was a bizarre late twist in a day of strange revelations and fitful attempts at fairness.
Chairwoman of the committee Makhosi Khoza had been excellent, for the most part, in quashing the petulance for which some ANC MPs have acquired a reputation in defence of their scandal-prone president.
To the delight of opposition MPs she made members of her own party cross the floor to sit with the “enemy” so the candidates could face their questioners.
And she would have none of it when ANC MP Bongani Bongo tried to shut down the questioning of Hofmeyr over his part in the decision to drop the corruption charges against Zuma.
To Bongo’s objection that the matter was sub judice - a frequently, if clumsily, deployed instrument in the quelling of debate - she retorted that opposition parties were entitled to their different perspectives.
She gained an enthusiastic following on social media as a result, some even suggesting she should instantly replace Baleka Mbete as speaker of Parliament.
In fact the process has become, largely thanks to Khoza’s refreshing transparency, an opportunity for Parliament to begin reclaiming its place in the democratic firmament.
But Khoza’s modernising style remains in tension with the Jurassic instincts of others on the committee. Masondo’s vengeful attack on Ramjathan-Keogh stood out.
It’s not that the potential for foreign money to shape policy via selective support for civil society activism should escape scrutiny.
But Masondo’s piety on this matter stands in contrast to his shifting standards as chairman of Parliament’s ethics committee, which has deliberately failed to act against MP Pule Mabe following a damning public protector finding against him.
Masondo’s excuse for this neglect was that the report in question was “too thick to print”.
Khoza is to announce the date of the committee’s next meeting, when it will sift through the answers, score the candidates and make its choice, which will then have to be approved by a 60 percent majority in the National Assembly.
Weekend Argus