Tackling serious issues with wit in letters to CR
FOR more than two years, award-winning columnist, journalist, satirist and author of three books Bhekisisa Mncube has written a letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa every week. The president has yet to respond.
Mncube was born in KwaZulu-Natal and holds a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Durban University of Technology. He now lives in Pretoria and has completed his first year of his Master’s degree in journalism and media studies at the University of the Witwatersrand.
“I use humour and irony to unpack the Ramaphosa administration. I laugh it off, but not without a net of irony thrown in for good measure,” said Mncube.
Mncube is author of the best-selling memoir The Love Diary of a Zulu Boy and recently launched his new book, The Ramaphosa Chronicles, in which he seeks to unravel the Ramaphosa administration, egging the president on over structural economic reforms and begging him to grow a robust spine. Using letter writing to conduct an open-ended dialogue with the president, he tackles heavy subjects, such as the prohibition of booze and cigarettes in lockdown, Covid-19 PPE criminal misdemeanours, Jacob Zuma, Nkandla, and, of course, his first love, advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane and her unusual court-losing streak.
“I call it an intergenerational public discourse, the key to a country with the ageing crew of leaders and young voters,” he says.
But, he does pat the president on the back for rebuilding the justice and security administration institutions such as the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and its new Investigative Directorate (ID), Special Investigative Unit (SIU) and Special Tribunal, among others.
Mncube’s prognosis of SA is that our homeland is slowly and steadily on the road to recovery after the nine ruinous years of Jacob Zuma, characterised by low growth, low tax collections, and poor political morality resulting in unbridled levels of corruption and malfeasance.
Mncube will share the basis of his optimism as guest speaker at The Valley Trust fundraising breakfast at Fig Tree Farm in Hillcrest at 8am on Friday, October 21 talking about SA at a Crossroads… with Potholes.