HOGARTH | Refugee roulette?

Refugee roulette?

The Orange One appears to have moved swiftly on from accusing South Africa of committing “Afrikaner genocide”. The US president’s target is now Nigeria, the oil-rich and populous West African nation he says is a “country of particular concern” because of a “Christian genocide” taking place there.

But, as in the South African case, Donald Trump’s evidence of such mass slaughter is based on social media posts and completely ignores the reality that the violent terror engulfing parts of the country has claimed the lives of both Muslim and Christian Nigerians.

Hogarth wonders whether, now that Trump has decided to be religiously selective in identifying the victims of such terror and violence, he will act consistently by opening his country’s borders to “Nigerian Christian refugees”, as he did for our Afrikaner-Americans?

Video blame games

Hogarth doesn’t know the strength of the friendship between Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and our own Cyril Ramaphosa. But if Tinubu is looking for advice on how to convince Trump that his country, whose population is almost evenly split between Christians and Muslims, is not involved in religious suicide, he should give Ramaphosa a call.

Cupcake, Hogarth is almost certain, will say to him, “Whatever you do, Mr President, don’t go to the Oval Office. But if you are forced to, just make sure they don’t show any videos.”

Cutting an ad hoc dash

After years of being overshadowed by the former minister in a hat and kept in the dark by his successor, who was later forced to take special leave, poor deputy police minister Cassel Mathale finally found his voice this week when he appeared before the parliamentary ad hoc committee investigating cops’ alleged links with criminal syndicates.

Mathale, who — among other admissions — confirmed he had not been assigned any formal responsibilities since Senzo Mchunu took over as minister last year, came out of his shell when he explained how he would have handled the disbandment of the political killings task team had he been minister.

If Hogarth didn’t know any better, he’d have said the man’s appearance before the ad hoc served only to remind Cupcake that he need not look only at the retired Wits professor for his next police minister when Mchunu finally falls on his sword.

Blue lights blues

But South Africa should not be too hard on the former Limpopo premier. It must be devastating to discover you have been travelling around telling people you are the deputy minister of police, only to learn the real deputy all along has been some small-time businessman from Mafikeng who goes by the name of Brown Mogotsi. You may have had the blue lights, but he had all the access to top-secret information you were not privy to.

Playing for the other team

Now that Mchunu’s presidential campaign has been flushed down the toilet and billionaire Patrice Motsepe has shown more appetite for being the next Fifa president than taking over Luthuli House, Deputy President Paul Mashatile and ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula currently look like the only two candidates with any realistic chance of succeeding McBuffalo.

Mbalula has been running a smart election campaign, dispatching himself to all the major ANC gatherings across the country, where he becomes the main speaker.

Realising the party is bleeding support owing to the revelations before both the ad hoc committee and the Madlanga commission, Mbaks has been using the speeches to try to distance the ANC from the activities of its corrupt comrades.

At one point during his speech this weekend, Mbaks — himself a former police minister — denounced the close association some senior cops and politicians seem to enjoy with known criminals.

“What type of country is that? Tsotsis [must be] one side and police officers [must be on the other side],” he declared.

Hogarth must agree, cops and tsotsis must be like oil and water.

Bribery’s not his bag

KwaZulu-Natal transport MEC Siboniso Duma and his staff are taking their department’s campaign against traffic officers taking bribes a little too far.

They have been dishing out branded lunch bags to departmental employees, on each of which is printed: “Ezika Duma aziyithathi imali yedrink" (Duma’s cops don’t take cool drink [bribe] money).

Besides wondering who won the tender to procure the bags, and how much money each of them cost the department, Hogarth had to ask himself what would happen to the bags if Duma was suddenly shuffled out of the department. Would the department have to procure new ones emblazoned with the name of the next MEC?