It’s simple, it all started with Polokwane

THIS THAT

RESIDENT Jacob Zuma this week admitted that the ANC was in trouble and that the governing party had been shaken.

“… The youth league has been shaken and also the mother body has been shaken. We admit that the organisation is in trouble.”

He wasn’t allowed to elaborate after appearing to have caused consternation among his senior comrades with ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe and his deputy, Jessie Duarte, jumping in to call to order what was reported to be a visibly embarrassed Zuma.

However, we don’t need Zuma, or anyone else, to spell it out. The organisation – and more importantly, the country – has been in trouble from the moment Zuma was elected ANC president – and head of state – in December 2007 in Polokwane.

It’s as simple as that.

PTHE presidency – or, more accurately, Zuma’s spin doctor Mac Maharaj – put out the following statement this week:

“The President has fulfilled his parliamentary responsibilities since his election as President in May 2014 to lead the fifth administration… The President is required to answer questions once per quarter in the National Assembly. He was elected and inaugurated in May 2014. That is when we begin counting for the new term of office of the President.

“President Zuma presented himself to the National Assembly in August 2014 to answer questions, within two months of his assumption of office. This was the first quarter of the new administration and parliament and the first quarter as per the rules of the National Assembly.”

And there you have it – how to get out of a tight corner by manipulating things to suit yourself. In this instance, to suit your boss, who pays you handsomely to do so. THE internet, according to Russian president Vladimir Putin, is a “CIA special project”, with the Kremlin saying it must protect its online realm from threats from the West as the Ukraine crisis sees ties between the Cold War-era foes hitting a new low,

Now Russia is reported to have asserted more control over the internet in what critics call moves to censor the web. It also has plans to create its own Wikipedia to ensure its citizens have access to more “detailed and reliable” information about their country.

Wouldn’t Zuma’s ANC – which ignored the widespread protests over its plans to introduce the despised “secrecy bill” – love to have its own Wikipedia to propagate its own version of facts. Imagine what it would say about the ongoing disgrace that is Nkandla. THE 1987 Volkswagen Beetle of Uruguay’s President José Mujica has struck a chord with many in this country, where self-important politicians splurge our money on very expensive vehicles and inflate their own importance with the expensive – and dangerous – blue light convoys they so love.

Mujica, who lives on a ramshackle farm in his wife’s name, says he recently received a $1 million (R11m) offer from an Arab sheik to buy his Beetle “… but I didn’t give it any importance”.

The Beetle was a present from friends who collected money for it, he said, and selling it would be offensive.

However, he said if he had decided to sell it, he would have donated the $1m to a programme he supports that gives housing to the homeless.

And yet another head of state has made a statement to his people by mingling with the common man.

President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, who has built a reputation for having the common touch and not being tainted by corruption, recently flew economy class with his wife and daughter to Singapore to attend his son’s graduation from a secondary school there and, according to a spokesman, the president paid for the tickets himself.

However, the president’s office did pay for his security team to travel.

In Singapore, local media broadcast images of the president posing for selfies with classmates of his son, Kaesang.

Meanwhile, our president can’t see anything wrong with splurging R246m of our money on his private home, and no doubt the fat cats that cocoon him will soon need new, very expensive, vehicles.

And next year we will be taxed even heavier than we are now… QUOTABLE quote: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” – Eleanor Roosevelt.