Given South Africa’s history, it is not uncommon for some of us — especially blacks — to have mistakes on their birth certificates. Apartheid’s bureaucrats were often comfortable only in Afrikaans and struggled to spell the names used by that slice of the population who were required to carry pass books.
But even that cannot explain the story of one Mike Sandlana, a leader of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, who appeared in the pages of this newspaper recently in connection with an alleged bribe given to a Pretoria judge.
Sandlana was in court earlier this week to apply for bail — but it turns out he has three identity document numbers. One of these, investigating officer Lt-Col Ludi Schenelle told the court, suggests Sandlana was born on a date that does not exist.
“The birth register reflects that he was born on February 29 1969… I have established that this date did not exist, as February 1969 ended on February 28,” Schenelle said.
A leap of faith, perhaps, on the part of the churchman?
So Madiba was also an outsider?
Hogarth fully appreciates why some ANC members are celebrating the election of Johannesburg finance MMC Loyiso Masuku as the new ANC regional chair. First of all, she is the first woman to hold the powerful post and second, her elevation means the political career of the widely unpopular Dada Morero is close to eclipse.
But it might be a bit of a stretch to compare Masuku’s election to that of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City, as one Nombulelo “Bullet” Nyathela did recently in Sowetan. Both Masuku and Mamdani were “outsiders”, he wrote, Mamdani because he is the son of Ugandan parents who emigrated to the US, and Masuku because she arrived in Gauteng after a childhood in what was then the Transkei.
This left Hogarth wondering if Bullet was perhaps labouring under the delusion that the Transkei is still an “independent” state.
Ploughing a lonely furrow
Hogarth doesn’t pretend to be an expert on the tripartite alliance. But his colleagues have attended enough ANC gatherings over the past 35 years to know that certain rituals are regarded as sacred in those quarters. For example, when the ANC holds national conferences and similar gatherings, the alliance partners send their most senior officials; Cosatu, its president, and the SACP its general secretary.
But such is the state of the alliance these days that when the ANC held its national general council (NGC) this week, the SACP delegation was led by a deputy general secretary, Madala Masuku, as his boss Solly Mapaila had “a prior engagement”.
A little bird tells Hogarth this more pressing engagement was the launch of a gardening project somewhere in the Northern Cape.
Imagine the likes of Moses Mabhida, Joe Slovo or Chris Hani missing an important gathering just so they could go plant a few potatoes. To borrow from Mmusi Maimane: iAlliance ayisafani. (The alliance is not the same anymore.)
Stick to your cabbage patch
Given the frosty reception Masuku received at the ANC gathering, Hogarth can’t blame Mapaila for giving the meeting a miss. So hostile was the audience that Masuku ended up in verbal knots: “We are saying, comrades, the decision to contest the elections is not to contest the ANC, the decision to contest elections is contestation of elections… Our members will be on the ground assisting the ANC to strengthen itself as members of the ANC to win the elections.”
At the end of the four-day gathering, Hogarth hears, everyone was so confused about what Masuku had said that party president Cyril Ramaphosa asked him and his comrades to stay away from all ANC gatherings preparing for next year’s elections until further notice.
Juju, fount of ANC wisdom
Instead of wasting so much energy trying to persuade the Reds to stay within the fold, maybe the ANC should focus on winning the leader of the Red Berets back. Julius Malema convened a news briefing on Thursday just to give his interpretation of what had happened at the ANC NGC. Predictably, much of what he had to say had to do with his friend Fikile Mbalula’s chances of becoming the next ANC leader. For a leader of a rival political party, Malema sure invests a lot of time and effort following what’s happening in the ANC. Is this what the young ones call Fomo?
Juju, ace driving instructor
What also became clear at that briefing is how much the self-styled commander-in-chief misses former bestie Mbuyiseni Ndlozi. At some stage during the presser, Malema went off on a tangent about how Ndlozi had been reluctant to learn how to drive, until he, Malema, got him to take the wheel in an open field in Marikana, North West.
“We said to Mbuyiseni, ‘Get in,’ he got in and he started driving. He drove, first time, successfully, and I think he was being driven by the spirit of our people in Marikana.”
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