Poetic Licence

There’s a special place in South African politics for people who lie so well, their denials come gift-wrapped in contradictions. Enter the MK Party. More precisely, enter its national spokesperson, who stared the public in the face and said, “The letter is fake.” Then blinked. “The signature was forged.” Then blinked again, silently letting Photoshop reactionaries take the fall for a dismissal letter he claimed he never received.

It’s the political version of a magic trick: now you see the lie, now you don’t. The only problem? The rabbit’s out of the hat, the audience is unimpressed, and the magician doesn’t know which trick he’s performing anymore.

This all began when MK Party national spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhlela took offence at a leaked letter that allegedly removed him from the party’s parliamentary whippery. Not only did he deny being fired, but he also called the letter a fabrication. “Fake,” he said. Its signature in question, its authority disputed. That was Wednesday.

By Thursday, the story turned. Dr John Hlophe, MKP’s parliamentary leader and deputy president, stood before the media and confirmed that yes, the letter was issued, and yes, it came from his office. In fact, he said Ndhlela had received it.

This is no longer a question of one party’s internal HR memo. It’s a test of credibility, and MKP is failing spectacularly. Because when the national spokesperson of a party lies to the public, or at the very least performs verbal gymnastics around the truth, the issue isn’t just internal discipline. It’s national trust.

Even more bizarre, Dr Hlophe, in the same breath that he confirmed the letter, went on to deny the existence of another letter: a supposed petition to remove Chief Whip Colleen Makhubele. He dismissed that story as a "figment of someone’s imagination." Which is rich, considering we’d just witnessed a full-blown hallucination the day before over a real letter that was first denied, then disputed, then digitally exorcised.

And so, here we are, watching a party that claims to represent the fighting spirit of liberation turn its communications office into a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel. Only in this one, every ending is a plot hole, and the narrator can’t be trusted.

The MK Party is rehearsing for high office. But every time the curtain rises, the script changes. Their lead communicator can’t even agree on whether the lines he delivered were real. They want to lead the moral rebirth of South Africa. But who will trust a party whose own spokesperson says, “Don’t believe your eyes”? The same hands that wave flags on a stage are the ones scrambling behind the curtain, trying to unsend a signed letter. How can a party rewrite the Constitution when they’re still improvising Act One? Because if your own spokesperson is lying, or worse, improvising, you’re not building a party. You’re building a farce.

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