Zweli Mkhize has always come across as a conscientious fellow, which is why it came as a shock when allegations that he used his influence as Health Minister to have a contract awarded to a long-time associate of his were levelled against him.

At the time of writing, the allegations had morphed beyond being just a whistle- blower’s accusations, with a Special Investigating Unit (SIU) probe finding that Mkhize and his son received about R7 000 and R3.8-million respectively in backhanders from the R150-million paid to the associate for communications work done for the Department of Health. The SIU now wants Mkhize – who has since resigned from Cabinet – to be prosecuted.

Of course, Mkhize remains innocent unless proven guilty by a court of law. But if he gets convicted, he will be an utter disappointment to those who believed he was a good man whose main motivation was to bring about a better South Africa for all.

A conviction would also mean Mkhize is a typical corrupt African politician, who, as Kenyan-born pan-Africanist PLO Lumumba famously lamented, unashamedly offers himself for election to public office, unlike his Japanese counterpart, who kills himself should his name be linked to corrupt activities, even tenuously.

Mkhize, as many would recall, was initially in the race for the leadership of the African National Congress but pulled out when the party’s elective conference rolled around in November 2017. When the corruption allegations first surfaced, some news outlets reported that he fancied his chances at the next elective conference – in 2022 – and that he had told those in his inner circle that the allegations were the work of party rivals who feared that he would be a formidable contestant.

If Mkhize is indeed the venal politician he has been made out to be, he would not be the first corruption-tainted high-profile South African to vie for public office. There was Jacob Zuma before him. We all know about his alleged role in the malfeasance around the Arms Deal, which led to his sacking as Deputy President by The Pipe Smoking One (aka Thabo Mbeki) back in 2005 and the jailing of Shabir Shaik, his former financial adviser. His alleged thieving went into overdrive once he became State President in 2009 and he would have remained in that position until 2019 had his party not forced him out a year earlier.

South Africa is not the only country – on our continent and elsewhere – that is cursed with unashamed politicians who steal public money and still want to serve in senior positions in government. Former Malawian President Peter Mutharika, for example, is currently involved in a legal tussle with anti-graft investigators, who allege that he allowed his tax number to be used for the duty-free importation of cement when he was serving his first term. The fellow went on to contest, and win, the country’s 2019 elections. He would still be President, had the Malawi Constitutional Court not annulled the results and ordered a rerun last year, which an opposition candidate won.

Then there was the late Robert Mugabe, whose wife infamously ordered a R21-million ring for their twentieth wedding anniversary and was notorious for binge shopping in the world’s fashion capitals. This extravagance was surely not financed by his meagre State salary or the money generated by their modest dairy business. The only credible possibility is that the Mugabes were beneficiaries of grand thievery from the national fiscus.

I could go on.

The lesson for the African electorate is that those of our leaders who are corrupt will always put their hand up at election time. As Lumumba points out, unlike the Chinese, we don’t kill them on this continent, so the best way to deal with them is to deny them the chance to occupy public office.