Brazilian butt of this joke is on us

Just when South Africans think things can't get worse on live daytime television, members of Parliament's committee probing police capture are forced - some would say enticed - to examine a surgically lifted bum

- Bhekisisa Mncube

Ah, Chief Dwasaho! I do not believe in coincidences. I believe dysfunction and criminal neglect are old drinking partners. They stagger out of the same tavern daily with the same wicked intentions.

Confusing? Stay with me. Can someone with a functioning cerebrum explain what exactly you, President Cyril Ramaphosa, were doing in Brazil on 9 and 10 March? Your office has been carpet-bombing us with trade documents, investment notes and those smiling pictures from Brasilia.

Yet, back home, the country is trapped in a grotesque telenovela of police capture, political interference and the slow collapse of public trust. At the precise moment your handlers wanted us to admire strategic partnerships and bilateral trade, South Africans were being force-fed another kind of Brazilian import on live daytime television. I speak of the now-infamous Brazilian butt lift (BBL) subplot spilling from testimony linked to the parliamentary inquiry into police capture.

So, one must ask, my leader: was this a state visit or a masterclass in political misdirection? While the Presidency was marketing Brazil as diplomacy, the republic was consuming it as an allegory - a surgical one, nogal (sic). A state forever trying to enhance the backside of a broken system cosmetically.

But the drama did not end with the backside viewing. Soon, the stage welcomed people in “business”, financiers and political couriers. It turns out that Lieutenant General Richard Shibiri, the suspended head of (dis)Organised Crime in the South African Police Service (SAPS), has developed a taste for finer things, though not the disciplines of public office.