MAMPARA OF THE WEEK

Gwede Mantashe

April Fool’s gold

The last time the country was embarrassed in this manner on a world stage was when Ras Dumisani sang the national anthem as if one of the Springboks were strangling the life out of him. Gwede Mantashe used taxpayers’ money to fly to Australia to sell an April Fool’s joke as an investment opportunity. The former miner, who led a mining union for years, stood up and told 400 delegates that a new mineral, dubbed “Hazenile”, had been discovered in the Western Cape. Worse, Uncle Gweezy punted this game-changing discovery at the Africa Down Under mining conference this week. Mantashe thought he was sitting on a gold mine, but he was fooled like a zama zama digging for diamonds in a sandpit. When he was made aware of his Mampara ways, he blamed junior advisers. Ever heard of Google, Mantampara?