Verbs alone don't lock up looters

Ensuring, strengthening and empowering are nice words, but sadly useless when thieves plunder billions

- Bhekisisa Mncube

Ah, Chief Dwasaho! Forgive the bluntness, but the country has developed a curious insomnia.

At the same time, you sleep like a baby — on parliamentary benches, at international summits, even in the high-definition glare of live television.

South Africa counts sheep; Comrade Leadership counts Zs. And yet we wake up to the same lullaby: another advisory council, another strategy, another promise that the crocodile will eat last.

Your latest invention, the National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council final report, arrived with trumpets and talking points, as though a fresh committee could frighten corruption into the confessional.

Really, my leader? Explain it to me slowly, like I'm in Grade 5: how must Professor Firoz Cachalia, an ANC ideologue with "no magic wand", stop your cadres from treating the fiscus like a family trust fund?

The report sings three tired choruses until the ceiling peels: ensure (87 times), strengthen (54 times), empower (22 times). "Ensure alignment." "Strengthen the Protected Disclosures Act." "Empower whistle-blowers." Lovely verbs. But verbs don't lock up looters.

Here is the comic twist - comic in the way tragedy can be: the very cohort neck-deep at the feeding trough must ensure, strengthen and empower the very institutions meant to claw back what was siphoned at midday, right there in front of tender committees and finance officials who stamped the payments before the ink was dry. That is not a strategy, it's a skit.

Swap the vocabulary test for three actions that matter: investigate, prosecute and recover. Until then, the hymn book remains in tune while the vault stays open.

Because I'm a stubborn citizen with an inconvenient affection for this republic, I've been able to rewrite your five favourite pillars. Consider this an act of public service, free of charge.

Pillar 1: Empower citizens and protect whistle-blowers