Tolashe’s misconduct and the gaslighting of South Africans

In 1938, English playwright and novelist Patrick Hamilton wrote a stage play which depicts a husband systematically manipulating his wife into believing she is losing her mind by denying her reality, specifically regarding the dimming of gas-powered lights, to steal her inheritance.

The play, called Gas Light, would give birth to the term “gaslighting” which is now widely used to describe a form of psychological manipulation designed to make victims doubt their own reality, memory and sanity.

This past week, South Africans experienced a practical demonstration of gaslighting at the hands of social development minister Sisisi Tolashe, who is also president of the ANC Women’s League.

Tolashe, who is under investigation after ActionSA reported a criminal complaint against her, is accused of serious misconduct, a blatant disregard for transparency and accountability, and possibly corruption.

A few weeks ago, an investigation by the Daily Maverick was published, alleging that Tolashe had falsely told parliament that she accepted two luxury vehicles from Chinese officials as donations for the ANC Women’s League.

In reality, the SUVs were never received by the women’s league, which has publicly denied any knowledge of them.

Official records show that the vehicles were registered in the names of the minister’s children, and that one of them has already been sold in a private transaction.

After weeks of ignoring requests from the media to respond to these allegations, Tolashe finally broke her silence in the form of a letter to the ANC’s integrity commission.

In it, she claimed that registering the vehicles in her children’s names was done for the purpose of safeguarding them.

She claimed that registering them in the name of the women’s league would have posed a risk of them being attached should there be an order to freeze the organisation’s assets.

Tolashe maintained that the persistent financial challenges being experienced by the ANC and its leagues created the possibility of assets being attached and forfeited, and that this informed her decision to not register the cars in the name of the Women’s League.

Tolashe evidently thinks South Africans are stupid, because there is no other explanation for why she believes that such an improbable story would be believed.

If the SUVs were registered under her children’s names to protect them, then the women’s league would have known about their existence, and they would be used by the organisation, as opposed to her family members.

This is classical gaslighting by the minister, and as is the case when gaslighting occurs in abusive relationships, perpetrators portray themselves as victims to solicit sympathy.

Tolashe wants us to divert our attention from her misconduct to the documented financial challenges facing the ANC and its leagues.

But these challenges themselves are not to be sympathised with because, rather than being a reflection of a difficult fiscal environment, they are the direct result of poor governance by the organisation.

But the bigger and more urgent issue pertaining to Tolashe is that she has, for a while now, benefited from a culture of lack of consequence management that has entrenched itself in our government and the ANC.

There is no reasonable explanation for why a minister who has allegedly consistently demonstrated lack of regard for the law and ethical conduct is still in the cabinet or leading the women’s league of a party that leads the government of national unity.

The issue of the vehicles is only one in a growing list of alleged transgressions by Tolashe.

The documented governance failures at the department of social development under her leadership are astounding.

She is so bold in her disregard of the law that she charged her own director-general with misconduct and advertised for his replacement without the legal authority to do either.

President Cyril Ramaphosa had to admonish her for this.

But this is not enough.

The failure by the president and the women’s league to hold Tolashe accountable for her actions is an insult to all South Africans — one that contributes to the growing deficit of trust in an ANC that is already haemorrhaging support.