Sadtu gets me all worked up into a sweat

Thursday. Durban’s a wet kiln. I’m wearing far too many clothes. I don’t have a choice. I’m on my way to meet this accountant cat from Angie Motshekga’s panel probing the alleged Sadtu cash-for-jobs-for- comrades gig, so I figure shorts and slops aren’t in order.

I’m edgy as hell. It’s not just the heat and the prospect of talking to a suit.

I’ve spent two weeks nursing this cat Nkonzo, who happens to be a cousin of the Croc (former City Press photographer Khaya Ngwenya).

He’s ready to spill the beans about how he coughed up a sweet R12 000 to a serving Sadtu provincial executive committee member for a transfer to the school where she was teaching and where she was a larney on the school governing body.

This is a weird situation.

Nkonzo is a hugely qualified teacher and a media commentator who also did a stint as a journalist at a local newspaper house. He is also owning up to having paid for his transfer.

He’s the first person who’s been willing to go on the record – with pictures – and confess to paying for a job.

That takes some kind of balls, but I guess buying a transfer does too.

Nkonzo reckons that when he stopped paying, his salary was stopped.

I’m flattened by the idea that a teacher at a school in Folweni can reach out and turn off somebody’s salary through the provincial education department’s head office.

That’s some scary shit. I’m also stoked. After nearly a year and a half, I have walking, talking, living proof that I’m not talking shit.

People have called press conferences to brand me a liar on national television, so I’m a bit edgy.

I’ve even forgone the annual office Christmas party and a chance to drink my own body weight in free beer – my call for the record – to make sure our man doesn’t change his mind and do a runner after spending a week in supergrass mode.

There’s no way I’m gonna let that happen, so the karaoke session had to go ahead with one less voice.

Given that I howl like a dog with its leg caught in a barbed wire fence, it’s probably a good thing for everybody concerned.

My plot is to do my civic duty and hook up Nkonzo with Motshekga’s investigators so they can act on what he has to say.

And then go and have my own Christmas party.