Not funny to fire ministers willy-nilly

IS IT funny when a deputy minister hits, slaps, tramples and lifts a woman by the hair and then knocks her about some more as stated by an eye witness?

Is it funny when the first citizen of the country makes an enormous mistake by firing a capable minister of finance with immediate negative effects on the economy? It did not seem funny at the time.

There is a little joke wherein a man staggered backwards in a full bus and landed on the lap of a lady. He said, “sorry ma’am, but I am a Laplander”.

That little quirk caused at least a titter. Then the man related the incident to his wife and said the man had said, “sorry ma’am but I am an Eskimo”. The wife remarked that she saw nothing funny in the story. The husband was perplexed and said, “well, it seemed very funny at the time”.

Dismissing the minister of finance without apparent reason did seem a bit funny at the time.

But a few months later, another respected minister of finance was dismissed by the same president with catastrophic consequences. I am afraid that hard as one tries, there is no mirth in making the same mistake recklessly again.

The ANC wants their members of Parliament to vote in a way that will keep President Jacob Zuma in power in the face of repeated calls from many angles and sources for his dismissal. The rationale is to keep the ANC intact, but there is a motion on the table not to destroy the ANC – only to remove a reckless man.

Under circumstances where a show of hands may keep the president in power simply because everybody knows that he will retaliate,, a secret ballot is reasonable.

It is likely that National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete will be less at risk to be dismissed if the president goes than if he stays.

We now know that she was brave; the consequences are perhaps not going to be funny; meanness, pettiness and revenge are seldom funny. Ben Smit Melkbosstrand