HOGARTH | We need more chiefs of stuff

Boys’ stuff is nice to know

For many years Hogarth has had reason to believe that in some ministries, and indeed in the Presidency, the chief of staff should be renamed the chief of stuff. The occupants of such offices seem to be preoccupied with all sorts of stuff other than doing their actual job, which is to be the political principal’s eyes and ears.

Hogarth’s suspicions have been confirmed by the performance of one Cedric Nkabinde — chief of staff to suspended police minister Senzo Mchunu — before the parliamentary ad hoc committee this week.

Asked why he and KZN police commissioner Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, whom he describes as a friend, travelled all the way to northern KZN to meet Mchunu, who was not yet police minister, Nkabinde replied: “I think it’s safe to say it was a boys’ trip … It’s safe to say it like that, otherwise me and him will get into trouble … Because I believe his wife and my wife are watching here, so I don’t want to delve much … The things that we do with him are very much personal.”

Seeing that there seems to be no other clear skill that may have impressed Mchunu so much about Nkabinde that he appointed him to the post, could it be that the minister’s choice was motivated by Nkabinde’s skill in organising “boys trips” and, ehm, stuff?

Perhaps the fireworks were at home?

Hours before Nkabinde appeared before the ad hoc committee, the SAPS announced that Mkhwanazi was scheduled to hold an important press conference at lunchtime in Durban. Media houses sent their top scribes and TV reporters to the presser, expecting it to deliver fireworks similar to his last press conference in July. But alas, the provincial commissioner was a no-show, sending his deputy to address the media instead. Could it be that the country’s favourite cop had to rush home to explain the boy’s club?

Good questions pity about the answer

Nkabinde wasn’t the only one to appear before the ad hoc committee this week. Adv Shamila Batohi, the national director of public prosecutions, had a difficult time trying to explain the work of the National Prosecuting Authority to sceptical MPs.

In one instance, she had an exchange with the PA’s Ashley Sauls about disgraced crime intelligence boss Richard Mdluli, who is serving time in prison. Sauls asked Batohi if a past decision to withdraw corruption and fraud charges against Mdluli amounted to defeating the ends of justice.

After pausing for a while, Batohi responded: “That’s a good question.”

To which Sauls retorted: “Do you have a good answer?”

Batohi had none.

Winning at his own game

The little that Hogarth knows about golf was taught to him by this newspaper’s sports editor, who is a football enthusiast. But even with that little knowledge, Hogarth found it amusing that the recent Mayoral Charity Challenge in Nelson Mandela Bay Metro was won by the council’s deputy mayor, Gary van Niekerk. Winning one’s own tournament?

Hogarth guesses this is why the Eastern Cape is known as the home of legends.

Here’s a Gary the president could trump

Speaking of golf, a little bird tells Hogarth that President Cyril Ramaphosa has been spending time at a driving range, honing his skills in anticipation of a round of golf with Donald Trump during the coming G20. Now that Trump will be a no-show, Hogarth suggests that Cupcake challenge the Gqeberha champion to a game.

A Marxist of the FBI’s own making

Donald Trump and the US elite are up in arms that New Yorkers have chosen someone who identifies as a democratic socialist as their next mayor. They have blamed everyone and everything — from what they call gullible Gen Zs to social media — for this development. But it would seem that the real culprit is the FBI.

In a 2013 interview, Zohran Mamdani’s father, the renowned academic Mahmood Mamdani, told how his participation in a Martin Luther King Jr-led protest in the 1960s had resulted in two FBI agents visiting him at his student digs.

Among their questions was whether Mamdani knew Karl Marx.

“I said, ‘I haven’t met him’,” Mamdani told his interviewer.

“No, no, he’s dead,” explained the FBI agent to Mamdani.

“Wow, what happened?”

“No, no, he died long ago”.

“Why are you asking me, if he died long ago?” asked Mamdani, puzzled.

“No, he wrote a lot. He wrote that poor people should not be poor,” explained the cop.

“Sounds amazing,” said Mamdani, who, after the police left, went to the library looking for Marx’s writings.

Without this police intervention, who knows, maybe the Orange One and his friends would not be having a Zohran Mamdani problem today.