On this very last day of a very long month, Albert Fritz must be contemplating the remainder of the year and wondering how much worse things are going to get for him.
His fall from grace last week was swift and sudden.
Stripped of his very powerful positions as both an MEC and provincial leader of the DA, Fritz is now also the subject of a police investigation.
If true, the sordid allegations point to a powerful man, believing himself to be untouchable, brazenly abusing young interns for his own sexual gratification.
The details are still vague for now, but it looks like Fritz surrounded himself with subordinates, who enabled his lust for new, young interns, by grooming them.
Four of these officials have also been suspended. It’s understood the MEC would go from Fritz to Frisky while they accompanied him on trips to outlying dorpies.
There is an almost hopeless irony to the fact that these accusations finger the political head of the province’s community safety at a time when he was meant to steer our social development.
These are two values-driven departments, where integrity is assumed, as their portfolio includes the oversight and supervision of the very crimes that Fritz allegedly made himself guilty of.
If that turns out to be the case, then it would expose a psychotic belief of entitled impunity; a self-belief that he is above the very laws that his party (and by extension, the electorate) made him custodian of.
What would make it even more inexplicably reprehensible, is that it occurred in times where the #MeToo movement is exposing similar stories of unbalanced power dynamics, leading to sexual exploitation.
Powerful men the world over have either been prosecuted by the law, or by the court of social media opinion – from Bill Cosby and Jeffrey Epstein, to Harvey Weinstein and Bill Clinton.
In his position, Fritz would’ve been very aware of such stories.
If he couldn’t champion a safe working environment for all his staff, especially his economically vulnerable interns, then he could’ve at least stopped the abuse, for fear that he too would eventually get caught.
Instead, his reputation is hanging on a few thin threads that could possibly snap, depending on what the cops uncover.
We don’t know the identities of the accusers, but one of the people they are likely to interview is Miche Solomons, aka Zephany Nurse – the woman who was reunited with her family after being stolen from her hospital bed as a baby.
She worked for Fritz as an intern and has publicly offered to testify against him, if he ever gets prosecuted.
She hasn’t said yet what she knows, but I just hope that she wasn’t one of the victims.
Because while sexual assault is a terrible ordeal that all victims suffer, heaven knows, Miche has been through more than most in her short life.
It would be dreadful if she was traumatised all over again for a moment’s gratification.
dailyvoice@inl.co.za