HOGARTH | It’s all quite revolting

Students of revolutionary uprisings say one prerequisite for success is the willingness of sections of the security forces to turn against the very state they are supposed to serve.

Hogarth wonders what these experts would make of a social media post by the department of justice & constitutional development. As news outlets published pictures of Lamborghinis being confiscated by the Special Investigating Unit at the mansion of Tembisa Hospital tender kingpin Hangwani Maumela, the DoJ&CD account commented: “We are not angry enough as South Africans. This was money meant to take care of patients in hospitals.”

Just as Hogarth thought a rebellion was brewing at the department’s Salu Building HQ in Pretoria, the post was quietly taken down.

Hold your nose, too

According to one of Hogarth’s informants who witnessed the raid on Maumela’s Sandhurst fortress, every room in the palatial home — including the bathrooms — has a TV set.

Hogarth could not help but wonder what the protocol is in the event of the president appearing on the screen for a “family meeting” or an address to parliament while one is ensconced on the bathroom throne.

Does one switch channels out of respect?

How filthy lucre got its name

The Sandton CBD is often celebrated as the richest square mile in Africa. But the suburbs around it are not too shabby either — Sandown, Sandhurst and Hyde Park, for starters. In recent years these three have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. If it isn’t a Julius Malema home in Sandown being auctioned to help pay a R16m debt to the taxman, it is the discovery that escaped convict Thabo Bester was living it up as President Cyril Ramaphosa’s neighbour in Hyde Park. Now Sandhurst, Lamborghinis and all, is being dragged into the Thembisa Hospital palaver.

Never mind richest square mile — it’s rapidly earning the title of most notorious neighbourhood in Africa.

Selfie backdrop hazards

Those familiar with the area will know that it is no more than a five-minute walk from Ramaphosa’s home to the mansion of Maumela —who happens to be a distant relative of the president’s via his first marriage.

Which probably explains why the president’s morning walks do go past the controversial businessman’s front gate. But is it really a coincidence that on one of his walks Cupcake once had pictures and videos taken of himself right in front of Maumela’s house, of all places? The home of a man he says he doesn’t know from a bar of soap?

Deliver us from evil

While the SIU was busy trying to recover what belongs to the Thembisa Hospital, the Ekurhuleni township’s favourite son, Panyaza Lesufi, was said to be organising a national prayer day for the health facility. But as controversy grew over how prayers could restore the R2bn lost to corruption, Lesufi’s office sought to distance the premier from the event, blaming unnamed organisers for associating him with it. Whoever the “organisers” were, Hogarth suggests they reserve their appeals to heaven for election day. The premier and his government are going to need them.

What would Jesus do?

Turning to religion when the heat is on seems to have been a thing this week. Former police minister Bheki Cele and suspended deputy national police commissioner Gen Shadrack Sibiya both found inspiration in the Bible when trying to counter the revelations of KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.

Cele, speaking at a memorial service for the late Nathi Mthethwa, lashed out at those who have questioned his possible role in aiding and abetting a suspected crime syndicate. The former minister said the country was now like “Sodom and Gomorrah” and appealed to some religious leader to go up a mountain and pray for the nation’s destruction.

Sibiya, meanwhile, was likening himself to Joseph, who the Book of Genesis says was sold into slavery by his own brothers. He will be hoping that coat of many colours doesn’t turn out to be a pair of orange overalls.

Long, leisurely walk to corruption

While others are turning to the holy book, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula is putting his faith in the thesaurus. Alarmed at how the party’s association with one Brown Mogotsi was tarnishing Brand ANC, Mr Razzmatazz found some big words with which to diss the controversial figure who is said to have been a middleman between suspended police minister Senzo Mchunu and criminal syndicates.

In true Mbalula fashion, Mogotsi wasn’t just guilty of name-dropping but of “perambulating among ANC leaders to impress them”.