Johannesburg - Bathabile Dlamini lied in court. This is not the embattled ANC Women’s League president's first rodeo. She rode a different bronco in 2003, roping R254,000 in mileage claims.
She was one of the MPs convicted of fraud at the Western Cape High Court for the Travelgate scandal.
Dandled by the ANC, the party promoted her to then president Jacob Zuma’s Cabinet in 2009.
Sentenced to a fine, she paid R120,000 over a five year prison sentence.
The inconsistencies in the theory of moral sentiments in this neck of the woods is not baffling.
Dlamini was one of a number of MPs who were found to have abused their travel vouchers to the cost of R18 million, of which R11 million was never recouped in the Travelgate saga..
The ANC’s National Executive Committee has still not made good on its promise in a 19 September 2004 statement to take action against the MPs.
Dlamini is putting pedal to the metal and her tank is far from empty. She is on her second rodeo, and Walter Sisulu University student Sibongile Mani can not relate.
She has been sentenced to five years' imprisonment for theft relating to R14 million accidentally credited to her account by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) in 2017.
There is no fine or repayment arrangement for low hanging fruits. You don't need a ladder to lower them from their high horses. If anything, Mani rode a mule, barren and stubborn like its father.
She was only entitled to a R1,400 monthly allowance for food. An idiot who made her payment at IntelliMali, a Cape Town-based company responsible for distributing NSFAS funds to students, added four extra zeros to her stipend, damning her to jail.
But you see, God doesn't give by hand where we come from. You could ask for rain and be blessed with a storm of hail.
It's one thing being wishful. But you need to be careful what you wish for.
You know how tricky genies can get.
How mysterious God is.
When you pray for strength, he doesn't give you superpowers. He puts you in a situation that requires you to be strong. Like a courtroom. Like a prison cell.
When you pray for patience, he doesn't freeze you in ice for nearly 70 years.
If you put those two prayers together, and if they are both granted, Mani would be Captain Africa. With a shield made of gold ravaged from our land by Anglo American, a British listed multinational mining company.
God doesn't give by hand where we come from.
But apparently he gives by force to the British.
For far too long we have lived in unanswered prayers and empty bellies. We have been living day zero since day one while running on fumes.
We have been meandering on landform composed of wind--driven sands, attempting to cultivate crops on dunes. Squeezing water from rocks. Our young are still baptized in pit toilets. What did you expect Mani to do with all that money?