WeeklySA_AdminINGLORIOUS: Earlier autobiography recalls unfamiliar sordid details of the businessman-turned-politician’s dark days as a roving thug with a penchant for womanising and stealing big-ticket items…
By Sy Makaringe
In the United States, former president Donald Trump stands accused in what is called a “hush money trial”, for allegedly covering up a $130 000 payment to well-known porn star Stormy Daniels, to buy her silence for an alleged sex scandal that took place in his hotel room almost a decade ago.
A conviction will almost certainly scupper Trump’s chances of running against President Joe Biden in the November 2024 US presidential elections for another stint in the White House.
If high-profile South African personalities – including businesspeople celebrities, politicians and those running for political office – were to be subjected to the same public scrutiny as their counterparts in the US and other Western democracies, Herman Mashaba, who is gunning for political power on a purportedly clean governance ticket, would be fielding very difficult questions today.
Late international popstar Michael Jackson, another globally acclaimed musician R Kelly, popular comedian Bill Cosby of the Dr Huxtable fame, film producer Harvey Weinstein, the list is endless, were tripped by not-so glorious pasts emanated from the prime of their careers or in the twilight of their lives.
Mashaba, who through his party ActionSA seeks to remove the ANC from power in the May 29 general elections, describing the ruling party as “a criminal enterprise”, displays a posture of a morally upright and law-abiding man whose mission is to restore South Africa’s credibility.
But his autobiography, Black Like You, written with the assistance of Isabella Morris and first published by MME Media in 2012, paints a grim picture of a man with a disturbing past.
The book, not to be confused with the controversial one for which well-known political analyst Prince Mashele was recently paid R12,5 million to write to boost the self-made multimillionaire’s chances in the race to the 2024 general elections, contains shady details of his involvement in criminal activities, commodification of women and propensity to break the law with impunity in his younger days in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria.
The fact that the first edition of the autobiography was published when Mashaba was already 53 and more mature, politically and otherwise, shows the businessman-turned-politician has no qualms with its contents.
The second edition was published by Bookstorm in 2017, when Mashaba was 58 and well into his first year as the executive mayor of Johannesburg, South Africa’s most populous city and the country’s economic hub. This may mean that, by omission, Mashaba vouches by its contents and has no regrets about his chequered past. His conduct could also not be attributed to the naivety of a man who was still wet behind the ears, otherwise he would have quietly chosen to edit the unseemly parts.
In one of the book’s chapters, Mashaba describes in graphic detail how he, helped by his friends, stole a stolen industrial welding machine and masterminded its sale to an infamous local crime kingpin and drug dealer nicknamed Moersekont (a vulgar word about a woman’s genitals).
“In the townships and villages of Hammanskraal, anybody who had a welding machine could make a living by repairing car exhausts or welding gates and window frames.
With this in mind, I decided that we’d get hold of (read steal) the machine and worry about a buyer later; if I had possession of it, I’d have an asset in my hands,” writes Mashaba about welding machine that first stolen by others from the now disused nearby Babelegi industrial park and hidden in the veld.
He says after stealing the machine, he was able to successfully convince Moersekont to double his initial offer for it, an interaction that he says “proved invaluable in developing negotiating skills that I later used in all my business dealings”.
It does not need rocket science to know that dealing in and selling stolen goods aids and abets criminality, the same thing that Mashaba accuses the ANC of. If Mashaba was as righteous as he portrays himself to be, he should have reported the theft to the police, instead of profiting from it. This made him a criminal too.
Mashaba also writes about how his mother spoke disapprovingly of the “loose girls” he always took home. He also boastfully describes how, after sharing the spoils from the sale of the stolen electric welding machine, he and his friends “hit the shebeens, each with a girl on either arm …”
He adds: “In 1978, during my matric year, I had attended a beauty contest at Hans Kekana High School, a popular boarding school named after a local chief in the area (sic). I decided to go fishing for girls at the pageant with Louis and two other friends, Selby and Ntja … A car was always a definite lure for females … “
This demonstrates Mashaba’s view of women (a piece of meat), not only in 1978 when he was aged 21, but also as recently as 2017 when he was already a fully grown man. In a country wracked by gender-based violence, this is not the view one would expect from a man whose political party seeks to take over government come May 29.
Mashaba also brags in the book about how he drove his first car, a blue Toyota Corolla, out of a showroom in Laudium, Pretoria, to his home in Hammanskraal, about 60km away, even though he did not have a driver’s licence and did not know how to drive, except learning by observing taxi drivers change gears.
“The Corolla hiccupped out of the dealership like an old drunk,” he gushes.
He drove the car illegally for a good two months, endangering the lives of other motorists in a country that has one of the highest road accident rates in the world, before he was finally issued with a driver’s licence,
His fans might argue that what Mashaba committed in his early days were misdemeanours that pale into comparison to what Donald Trump has been charged with, for instance. But a crime is a crime is a crime. Ditto unbecoming behaviour. And, as they say, old habits die hard.
* Sy Makaringe is a Limpopo-based editorial content development specialist
