THE THIRD UMPIRE

ANGELA MERKEL

The German chancellor’s handling of the refugee crisis came close to claiming her scalp at the weekend, when the governing party lost more than 1-million votes to a right-wing opponent, leaving her with no obvious coalition partners.

GOODWILL ZWELITHINI

Entitlement has been given new meaning by the Zulu king’s complaint that he does not get the “stipend I deserve”. The KwaZulu-Natal government allocates the Zulu royal family an annual budget of almost R60m.

DAVID MEADE

Did the earth move for you on Heritage Day? No? Not even a little? That’s odd, because this self-styled “Christian numerologist” claimed to have found hidden “codes” in the Bible that said the world would come to a fiery end on Sunday.