‘Taliban’head rules province
Hopefully the first woman premier of Kwazulu-natal won’t have to wear a headscarf and can continue her studies
Thursday. A week is, as always,a very long time in the world of politics, both as a general principle and in our fair republic in particular. Seven days ago, I was simultaneously decompressing from the ANC national policy conference and warming up for Arsenal vs Crystal Palace. Sihle Zikalala was still the Kwazulu-natal premier and the governing party’s suspended secretary general, Ace Magashule, still had a chance — albeit slim — of getting inside the governing party’s national conference in December, rather than hanging about in the street with the rest of the “outside delegates”, as they are known in the movement.
A week later, Kwazulu-natal has a new premier in the form of Nomusa Dube-ncube — and a whole lot of new cabinet members. The constitutional court has nixed Magashule’s application for leave to appeal against his suspension from office and former chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng’s bid for the presidency of the country is inching closer to being official.
A very long time.
Dube-ncube’s dumping of several sitting MECS to accommodate members of the “Taliban” faction who nominated her as premier candidate after Zikalala’s resignation isn’t a surprise.
They are, after all, Dube-ncube’s
new political bosses, so she couldn’t exactly pass them over and simply replace herself, Zikalala and economic development MEC Ravi Pillay, who resigned on Wednesday morning, leave the cabinet as it was and carry on regardless.
That would have resulted in an instant trip to Seme House on the part of the new premier to explain her actions to the province’s top officials, even before getting the access card for her new offices at 300 Langalibalele Street in Pietermaritzburg.
Dube-ncube will have to take instructions from the ANC provincial office — just like Zikalala’s predecessor, stand-in premier Willies
Mchunu — from now until the 2024 national and provincial elections, along with a regular checklisting to make sure that party conference resolutions have been implemented to the word.
Not a particularly fun way to spend a year and a bit of running the province — or the way Dube-ncube would have envisaged when she first put her hand up to stand for the post of ANC chairperson. But one works with what one has.
It would have been better for Dubencube — and the rest of us — if the new premier had the additional authority that comes with being chairperson — no two centres of power drama for the next year and a half. But we are where we are.
I wonder if the comrades in the “Taliban” are aware of the irony of their appointing Dube-ncube as their boss, given the stance of the organisation whose name they’ve appropriated towards women.
Hopefully, they’re not like the real Taliban, and will be happy with telling the premier what to do, and won’t insist on a scarf, or force Dubencube
to abandon her PHD studies. Hopefully.
I’m totally unsurprised — and somewhat pleased — by the announcement by the All African Alliance Movement that Mogoeng will stand as its presidential candidate in 2024.
Not because I have any intention of making my cross next to Momo’s head on the ballot paper — I’m more about conference resolutions than the 12 Commandments — but because the former chief justice is good for a laugh, and we will certainly need some by the time 2024 comes around.
I had Momo pegged for a political career from the first time I saw him live, at a women in the judiciary gig at the University of Kwazulu-natal, one weekend not long after he was appointed as chief justice.
I was sent there by a news editor who didn’t like the idea of me watching football in the office, but it turned out to be just as entertaining as a premier league fixture — maybe even more so.
As soon as Momo got the mike it was on. Our man was looking over his shoulder for the band as he hit the stage. Way more hallelujahs than habeas corpuses, lots of stuff about Solomon and Ruth and Rebecca, but not a lot about women and the judiciary, at least not that I can remember.
Since then, it’s been clear that Momo had stars in his eyes and was just warming up — that the office of the chief justice was just a platform for bigger, groovier things, a stop along the way.
There are more benefits to Mogoeng going into full time politics than the merely comic.
A Momo presidential bid will also split the Christian fundamentalist vote — always a good thing in my book — and may also give Magashule a conference to attend, now that Nasrec in December is a no-no — at least for the suspended secretary general.
I wonder if the comrades in the ‘Taliban’ are aware of the irony of their appointing Dubencube as their boss