Perhaps it was kept top-secret so as not to disrupt a policy of currying favour with the Chinese – which would explain why the media was not fed a single line about a whole lot of rice donated to the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality by Taipei.
Forty tons, in fact.
And that is probably why it has cooked up a storm, with one councillor dishing up the response that the donation was rejected, while a municipal spokesperson has served the media the explanation that it’s gone to a local feeding scheme.
Whichever is true, former council speaker Jonathan Lawack has made a meal out of the mystery and accused the political leadership in the city of hiding the 40-ton consignment.
Which would entail a lot of hiding.
The riddle of the rice was raised at the Nangoza Jebe Hall council meeting on Tuesday.
Lawack’s oral questions on Tuesday were preceded by written questions to mayor Mongameli Bobani’s office.
At the meeting, Lawack said he rejected the reply as there was “no grain of truth in it”.
“We received a very generous donation from Taiwan, 40 tons of rice. You can feed a lot of people with that,” Lawack said.
He lambasted the new coalition in the metro for not inviting any media to the handover in October.
“When you receive a donation of this magnitude you afford the donor the courtesy of sharing it with the media and they [the political leadership] didn’t do that.
“It’s dishonesty on their side. They gladly received a donation of rice, but were dishonest in not acknowledging the donor,” he said.
Lawack said it was clear that those at the helm at City Hall did not want to “trample on China’s toes”.
“The ANC and national government have relations with mainland China. Mainland China isolates Taiwan because of their history,” he said.
He added that he was not sure what the city planned to do with the rice.
“I hope it gets to the people who are desperately in need of food – I really hope so.
“I hope somebody doesn’t see this as an opportunity to sell off the rice.
“We are so corrupt in this country and it’s disheartening that someone could do that with rice of all things,” he said.
At the Tuesday meeting, the mayoral committee member in charge of infrastructure and engineering, Andile Lungisa, said the country had no trade relations with Taipei.
“Taiwan is a province somewhere in China. They have their own issues and they must be attended to at that level. We are an independent country,” Lungisa said.
“We cannot interfere in internal conflicts on China. We have trade relations with China, not Taipei,” he said.
Lungisa denied that the city had accepted the donation of rice and said that the mayoral committee member in charge of economic development and tourism, Queenie Pink, had been told to communicate the rejection.
“We did not accept the rice. Anybody who accepted the rice did so in their individual capacity,” Lungisa said.
Municipal spokesperson Mthubanzi Mniki, however, said the rice was in storage.
“Most of the rice is still in storage. The municipality has already distributed a number of bags to an NGO’s [feeding scheme] in Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage.
“More will be distributed and the municipality will make sure that it benefits the poorest of the poor,” Mniki said.
Taiwan consul-general Dean Wang said the rice had been handed over to the city on October 2.
Asked to confirm that Taipei did in fact make the donation Wang said: “We donated the rice and it was accepted by the deputy mayor.”
Upon being told that the politicians had denied receiving the rice, Wang said: “Are you kidding? We donated the rice and as far as I know there were no newspapers there.”