Close your eyes all you want, it won't go away...

Small children sometimes play a game believing that if they close their eyes, they are invisible. My cat, when scared of something, dives under the covers of my bed also believing if he cannot see it, it cannot see him. Adults too have such a game: they often think if they pretend a problem does not exist, or if they look the other way long enough, it will go away.

Here’s the truth: the child is not invisible; the threat to the cat remains; and the adult’s problem never goes away unless he deals with it.

It is a lesson many have to learn - particularly in presentday South Africa. A case in point is Julius Malema, that well-spoken, good-mannered, sophisticated young man who leads the ANC Youth League, the kindergarten for wannabe ruling party politicians, home of the “I am not scared” brigade.

You see, Julius has what looks to most ordinary people like a BIG problem: on a reported salary of some R25,000 a month he is driving around in a R1.2-million car and has flattened a R3.6-million house to build a house that allegedly will cost about R16-million, complete with Hitler-style underground bunker in which he can hide in times of trouble. You see, here’s that thing again: if I can’t see them, they can’t see me.

Seriously though, what would this boy-man, who surrounds himself with automatic-gun-toting bodyguards, be so scared of?

The alleged rape victims that he cheesed off with his ridiculous statements? The farmers whose land he wants seized? The “boers” and “farmers” he wants shot? The journalists he calls “bloody agents” with “white attitudes”?

Maybe, the ANC politicians he wants to topple? The mine owners whose businesses he wants to nationalise? Opposition leader Helen Zille whom he called a “dancing monkey”, or her “tea girl” Lindiwe Mazibuko? The aspiring young leaders in the Youth League he bamboozled onto a sideline to nowhere?

Or maybe it is of the leaders of labour federation Cosatu and the SA Communist Party whose claim to look after the nationalised wealth of the land on behalf of the people he is threatening? Or the hungry masses whose sole leader he claims to be and who, he says, want to see their Leader live in obscene opulence?

Or could the thought of an investigation into his rather mysterious affairs by the taxman and the Special Investigating Unit, or even the Hawks (despite their sometimes rather lame wings), be filling the young Julius with uncontrollable terror?

Everybody wants answers from Julius about where he gets his money, or why his business associates are growing filthy rich on state tenders, especially in Julius’s home province of Limpopo, and especially those, it would seem, that give Julius rather handsome presents ... like R1.2-million cars.

Yet Julius’s only response so far has been to close his eyes, make it go away and tell those “bloody agent” journalists “it’s none of your business”. Of course, he also tried, and failed, to gag a newspaper that dug a little deeper. The problem is, Julius, it’s not going to go away. Like the arms deal scandal also won’t go away.

Just when it seemed like Menzi Similane was safely ensconced as puppet master at the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), when those nasty Scorpions had been squashed underfoot and replaced by the far more likeable Hawks, just when the police and the NPA had declared the arms deal a done one and closed the file (forever they thought), and just as President Jacob Zuma thought he could be president without having to worry any longer about silly little questions about this dreaded affair, up popped “a new development”!

Surprise, surprise. In June Swedish defence group Saab admitted that between them and erstwhile British partner BAE Systems, R24-million had been paid in bribes to clinch a contract to supply South Africa with 26 new JAS Gripen fighter planes. One of the recipients was said to be Fana Hlongwane, adviser to the South African defence minister when the deals were being done.

But despite a minor political storm sweeping through Parliament, opposition politicians demanding the arms deal be retrieved from under the carpet and investigations into it be reopened, and despite even the Swedes turning up the heat on the SA government, the government’s response so far has been one of utter silence. Pretend it’s not there and it will go away.

In fact the government, and particularly President Zuma, have remained mum on a lot of such things lately. Public Works Minister Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde refused to answer the Public Protector’s questions about fishy rental leases for police offices, and neither she nor Police Commissioner Bheki Cele want to say anything.

President Zuma has also surrounded himself with a deafening silence despite the Public Protector’s damning report and demand for action by the president. Still, the problem won’t go away.

It is a hard lesson they can learn from two Kenyans, as told by the Nairobi Law Monthly.

It is the story of Kenya’s former finance and energy minister, Chris Okemo, and the former managing director of Kenya’s state electricity company, Samuel Gichuru who have been hauled off to the faraway Jersey island to stand trial for crimes allegedly committed between 1999 and 2002.

It is alleged the two received bribes amounting to US$20-million from French multinational Alcatel to secure a Kenyan cellphone network contract for the company and then tried to launder the money through bank accounts in the no-questions-asked tax haven that is Jersey.

And, in April the former Costa Rican President Miguel Angel Rodriguez was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the same bribery scandal involving Alcatel and, in this case, the Costa Rican state telecommunications company. Despite some 10 years having passed, the nightmare never went away for the Kenyans or Mr Rodriguez.

So, you can close your eyes all you want ... but it won’t go away.

Stef Terblanche