This is no April Fool’s joke

TODAY is April Fool’s Day. It’s a day of playing prank and publishing hoaxes that dates all the way back to medieval England and specifically Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

The problem these days is that thanks to social media, fake news abounds. As commentator and comic John Vlismas noted yesterday: “It shows you minute things on a massive scale.” We can still handle it, though.

What most of us can’t handle are the events of this week in South Africa: a finance minister and deputy finance minister recalled from a scheduled trip to reassure international observers, which is then explained by an alleged intelligence report so parlous and threadbare it could have been conceived as a primary school project.

Then we have the burial of a Struggle luminary to whom everyone who is anyone, including those who are no one, is invited – but not the president.

Then this is followed by a midnight conclave, well past the deadlines of newspapers – and most people’s bedtimes – to clean out the cabinet of ministers who had been effective and summarily replace them with an assortment of everyone from the current court jester to total unknowns in portfolios that require serious specific skills.

Indeed, the tenor and scope of the restructure almost renders the original appointment of Des “Weekend Special” van Rooyen, to global consternation in December 2015, reasonable and measured by comparison.

Then the Western Cape High Court astonished us all by ruling that dagga may now be legally grown and consumed by users in the privacy of their homes without fear of arrest.

South Africa faces dark days ahead with the capture of the Treasury by Zuma and his crooked friends. Although it is tempting to retreat to the comfort of recreational drugs, the public needs to peacefully and legally stand up for the country. This isn’t time to smoke or joke.