Have we chosen presidential opulence over country's wealth?

The Julius Malema-led EFF squared up with Jacob Zuma in parliament. They asked the president, ‘When are you going to pay back the money?’ The president responded to the question, by not answering it, and all hell broke loose.

In a fit of rage, Gwede Mantashe remarked that parliament may have to relocate because the WC police don’t take instructions. Don’t ask ‘whose instructions?’ Maybe the Farlam Commission on the Marikana massacre will reveal that, in a way. That is if the Commission is not yet another façade of our democratic dispensation.

Thami ka Plaatjie entered the fray. He ordered the Public Protector to “learn to wait”; and reminded her that she is “not a law unto herself.” A barrage of irate remarks ensued, some ordering Thami to sit down, while others urged him to keep the missiles flying into 187 Bree Street.

The Chairperson of the MK Military Veterans Association, who is also Deputy Minister of Defence, (just think about this combination), Kebby Maphatsoe, took to the podium at a weekend event to get a few things off his chest. He has since been made to swallow his words; for “insinuating” that Thuli Madonsela is a CIA agent. And while you hold that thought, is this not an act of misleading parliament, that a Minister refutes claims inside parliament, and apologises later for saying what he refuted?

How did we get sidetracked like this?

Should we be shouting "pay back the money"? Should those of us who oppose Public Protector’s finding descend to parliament to protect “our president” from the EFF? We are sidetracked, and we seem to be enjoying our off-track descent.

Here we are, clogging our arteries, and sustaining blinding headaches, shouting at the president, to pay back part of R250m spent on Nkandla, because the Public Protector has said so. Yet, we have not made any demands to an endless conveyer belt of foreign-controlled, racist, and exclusive programme which has been taking from our land, and beneath it, for 3 centuries.

I thought that the miners in the platinum belt were onto something. The death of 34+ people in Marikana is a loud message of where the politics are. I thought that after the Die Doorns strikes we'd all say: Enough with this greed!

I thought that we’d show that our way out of poverty is to reclaim equitable ownership of what makes others so wealthy. And I was under the impression that we will be weeding out the politician-cum-rogues from the garden patch while we are at it.

But no, we are fighting for space in parliament in order to shout at the president. Are we supposed to throttle each other, as black people, just because the president, whose party was voted into power 3 months ago, is refusing to pay back part of a mere R250m?

Yes, R250m is nothing. How much money have we wasted, looted, in the public sector, before and during the time when the president watched with bewilderment as his Nkandla home rose from the ground? How much is being wasted now as you are reading this piece? And how much will still be stolen?

Will paying back a fraction of the money by the president solve the problems we are having? Seeing that we are bent on seeing the president return some of the money to government coffers, for what use will that money? Do we want the money to be paid so that it can be stolen again using different methods, or do we want politicians and oligarchy to find a way back to being human?

If the answer is the former, then what we are seeing today may worsen tomorrow. But if the answer is the latter, then we must all deliver dishonest politicians and oligarchy from their evil ways. It is in the interest of humanity that we help them to be human again. And the only way for them to gain acceptance to humanness is to pay back the wealth, and surrender it to the nation.