Hogarth
Mahlobo: minister of intelligence or folly?
SO No 1 gets impeccable intelligence from his Austin Powers wannabes that Pravin Gordhan and Mcebisi Jonas are in London and the US meeting foreign agents who want to effect “regime change in South Africa”.
So he orders Presidency DirectorGeneral Cassius Lubisi to write to his finance minister and deputy, ordering them “to return back home” immediately.
As it soon turned out, the spooks had fed No 1 wrong information — Jonas was in Pretoria all along.
What does No 1 do thereafter? He fires Gordhan and Jonas but still keeps spy boss David Mahlobo as his intelligence minister!
No 1 has his own entry in the Zulu dictionary
HOGARTH has been taking some Nguni lessons in keeping with the decolonisation spirit sweeping through the republic. He was stunned to learn, when consulting the Z-section of his trusty dictionary, that uku-zuma in Zulu means “to lie down in ambush and take by surprise”, which is probably what some of the ministers who received the presidential axe were thinking on Friday morning.
Prez’s protocol: 50 ways to leave your minister
UNCLE Pravin seemed particularly hurt on Friday that he only heard about his axing from cabinet on TV when it was announced that Instagram minister Malusi Gigabyte would now double up as finance minister
It would probably give the former minister cold comfort to know that he is not the first one to hear that he had lost the use of blue lights via the media. One Bheki Cele heard from a reporter at a police roadblock in Mpumalanga in 2012 that No 1 had fired him as the national police commissioner.
Good-as-gone Gordhan still sharp as a razor
DURING his final media briefing at the National Treasury on Friday, the sound of a chair moving caught Gordhan’s attention.
“Watch it, watch it, there is some tradition in the Treasury of the chairs collapsing, so be careful,” he said. He was of course referring to that very famous moment when former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene fell off his chair on live TV.
Gordhan may have lost his job, but clearly he hasn’t lost his sense of humour.
Zuma no-show at Kathy funeral an altruistic act
PITY No 1 is not a man of letters. For if he was, he would have provided this response — quoted from Mandla Langa’s superb The Lost Colours
of the Chameleon — to those talking about his ban from struggle stalwart Ahmed Kathrada’s funeral:
“I’d have been forced to defend the government I head. Funerals are a good place for malcontents to vent their spleens . . .
“I couldn’t possibly steal their thunder.”
Dear Mr President . . . listened to Bieber lately?
BUT since the Nkandla Crooner is unlike our pipe-smoking former head of state — who was fond of quoting dead poets — Hogarth wonders if his barring from Uncle Kathy’s funeral by the Kathrada family at least made him think of that line in a Justin Bieber song: “My uncle don’t like you and he likes everyone.”
Juju always spills the beans — half the time
NOT to be left out of all the drama taking place in his former political home this week, the Gossiper-in-Chief of the Red Berets saw it necessary to convene an urgent press conference on Friday to once again entertain reporters with his unsubstantiated but comical tales of what is happening within the ANC.
Juju, however, did gain some of Hogarth’s respect when he confessed that: “Half the time I tell the truth.” And the other half? Gossip.
Everyone’s officially high in Cape’s top court
AS the nation woke up slightly stunned on Friday by the events of the night before, it also heard the news that the court had given them something of a panacea for the pain by allowing adults to grow and smoke weed in their own homes. And now stoners everywhere finally understand why it’s called the Western Cape High Court.