Benefit of the doubt — or doubts about the benefit
THE Old Hog never ceases to be amazed by No 1. Just this week he told the nation that he’s still waiting for Thuli Madonsela to explain to him how he “unduly benefited” from the R246-million Nkandla upgrades.
“She was speaking in English . . . she said there was ‘undue benefit’ . . . I’m still looking for it till today,” he said on Wednesday.
It is right there, in public protector Thuli Madonsela’s 447-page report about security upgrades at your homestead. Maybe you should take some time off one weekend and have a read.
Then again, the late education minister Kader Asmal did tell us that you don’t read.
So maybe you should take a stroll around your sprawling yard. You would see a swimming pool — which your officials prefer to call a fire pool — a cattle kraal; a state-of-the-art chicken run and various other items built for you at taxpayers’ expense.
None so blind as those
BUT No 1 is not the only one who has adopted the “see no evil, hear no evil” approach.
While the whole country watched Madonsela’s three-hour press conference on her Nkandla report, ANC MPs seemingly slept.
This week, a number of ANC MPs selected by Luthuli House to represent the party on the parliamentary ad hoc committee set up to probe No 1’s reply to Madonsela’s report proudly told the nation that they had not had time to read it.
Is this the ANC’s new approach to political controversy: “If you have not read it, it didn’t happen?”
Beware friends bearing puns
IF the Karaoke King did read, he would have been laughing himself silly as he watched standup-comedian-turned-politician Juju get a taste of his own medicine.
The self-proclaimed commander-in-chief of the red-beret toy army has made a name for himself by lampooning our Singing President.
But this week the guns were turned on Juju when one of his former bar-buddies, fraud convict Gayton McKenzie, wrote him an open letter: “For most of my younger years I was surrounded by con men and thieves. But you are the biggest thief I ever met. You, truly, are the Con-mander-in-Thief,” McKenzie wrote.
The talkative Juju has yet to issue a comprehensive response.
The about-face on posters
HOGARTH is amused by the ongoing controversy surrounding the ANC’s recent attempts to ban the Desperate Alliance’s election campaign series that essentially tells voters that South Africa was a paradise of good governance during the pipe-smoking intellectual emperor’s presidency.
Instead of banning the ads, all Hlaudi Motsoeneng and his handlers at Luthuli House should be doing is pulling out file copies of the famous 2004 DA election advert that likened then-president ThaboMbeki to . . . wait for it . . . Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.
Populist music
ZWELINZIMA Vavi finally participated in his first election campaign meeting this week following an ANC-brokered deal that meant he could keep his Cosatu job, at least for another month or so.
Word is, however, that Vavi — who is highly critical of the current ANC leadership — found himself out of touch with his comrades as they chanted the party’s latest election slogans during the meeting held in Cape Town.
“Y-tjukutja ANC, Y-tjukutja [the ANC is rocking . . .],” he heard the people chant.
Hogarth hears that it was only after hearing the kwaito hit played on the radio that Vavi realised that, in Cosatu’s absence, kwaito has taken over the ANC.
Time will tell
THE implementation of the ANC’s cadre deployment policy might be so disastrous that it actually works to the benefit of the country.
There is no greater example of this than the Singing President’s appointment of Thuli Madonsela as public protector.
Unlike the good ANC cadre she was supposed to be, Madonsela has been responsible for bringing down a number of senior party leaders and may soon be responsible for No 1’s own downfall.
And for all her “counter-revolutionary effort”, Madonsela has been honoured by Time magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people. How does the party that put her in the job in the first place react?
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe responded to the news by saying: “I can only congratulate her, that is all.”
Clearly no love lost there.