WORLDVIEW: Petty corruption dulls any hope the ANC can change

This week, I read yet another news story about the endless, petty, tedious corruption that seems so endemic to South African public life. It brought into focus why it can be so hard to believe that the ANC-led government will ever manage to turn things around for our corruption-riddled, crisis-hit country.

On Monday, City Press reported that Mpumalanga politician and MEC Lindiwe Ntshalintshali allegedly ran up a R348,000 hotel bill – on the taxpayers' dime – while she waited for her allocated housing (apparently she was "finicky" and rejected six houses that were offered to her).

Now, I don't know if Ntshalintshali is as bad as she's made out – she says that she's being targeted by political rivals and that the houses were rejected on legitimate security grounds. But it does seem inarguable that the former eMalahleni mayor ran up a six-figure, taxpayer-funded hotel bill while waiting to be given a taxpayer-funded house. What's more, this is not her first corruption scandal. In 2016, she got in hot water for allegedly trying to use R1.5 million of eMalahleni's service delivery money to buy herself a mayoral Lexus. Then, in 2017, she attracted criticism for spending R21 million of taxpayers' money to protect her private home. Again, I don't know the truth of these various corruption scandals. But at some point, one must at least wonder about smoke and fires.

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