An AfriForum diehard posted a video on X of the EFF’s self-styled commander-in-chief, Julius Malema, chanting “Kill the Boer”.
“Chanting for genocide,” responded Pretoria-born X owner and world’s richest man Elon Musk.
Seeing it as his revolutionary duty to defend the red berets on whichever platform is being used to attack them, EFF functionary Sinawo Thambo — who is slowly gaining a reputation as the new Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, albeit without a singing voice — shot back at Musk with “Go to hell, Nazi!”
He must have felt really good about the blow he thought he had struck against the oligarch on behalf of oppressed peoples the world over.
Well, that was until Malema posted his own reply, saying, “You can also voetsek!”
The C-in-C’s post must have been confusing for Thambo, who would have started to doubt himself, perhaps wondering whether he had sung loudly enough during his boss’s court appearance in East London to demonstrate his undying loyalty to him and the cause. Did he, perchance, pocket-dial Floyd Shivambu by mistake, and the C-in-C’s intelligence unit found out about it?
Fortunately, the C-in-C realised the error and later clarified matters. “Ke ra, Elon,” he wrote in Sepedi, explaining he meant Elon, not Thambo.
Sjoe! Fighters, the lesson here is that going into battle using the very platform of your professed enemy can result in friendly fire.
Disreputable dealings
Thambo is not giving up on being an X warrior, though. Yesterday, when Musk took to the app to defend himself against fresh allegations that he may have been much closer to dead paedophile Jeffrey Epstein than he had previously let on, Thambo was there to tackle him.
“Another reason South Africa should not do business with Starlink,” he posted. “We cannot work with associates and friends of Jeffrey Epstein. Disgusting!”
This time Malema was wise enough not to enter the fray.
Fazed and confused
On the sidelines of a recent lekgotla — there are so many these days that Hogarth can’t tell which are for the ANC and which for the GNU — a journalist asked President Cyril Ramaphosa about the discovery of some ANC conference ballot papers at a private home.
The president seemed confused and was hesitant to respond, but the SABC reporter pressed him for an answer. The president took a few seconds to think and then said, “I am not aware.”
Is that, Mr President, a 2026 way of saying, “I am shocked”?
Cash is king for Cupcake
Still on Cupcake, Hogarth recently came across an interesting digital newspaper called The Continent. In its review of 2025, the paper’s editors were asked about the role our president had played in trying to promote multilateralism in the face of Donald Trump’s hostility to the concept.
The editors were complimentary about Cupcake’s efforts, praising him for the way he conducted himself during that infamous White House ambush. But even they couldn’t help but have a word about Phala Phala. “Pity about his banking habits, though,” they said in their concluding remarks about our head of state.
Help them get their heads read
Hogarth regards Col Robert Netshiunda as one of the best police spokespersons in the country, and not because he works with arguably the best cop in the service, Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.
Netshiunda has been exceptional in the role since taking over, so Hogarth was as horrified as everyone else when he saw the video of the colonel being subjected to tribalistic slurs by a woman who said, because he hailed from outside of KwaZulu-Natal and wasn’t a first-language isiZulu speaker, that he was a kwerekwere — an offensive term for Africans from beyond the borders of this country.
The woman claimed not to understand English and demanded Netshiunda leave the province if he couldn’t address her in isiZulu. Yet, just a few days later, the same woman popped up in other videos, where she could be seen speaking to a South African policeman of Asian heritage and had no difficulty using the language of the coloniser.
Not so long ago, the Zulu royal house suggested the same woman be sent for psychiatric assessment after she made outlandish claims about King Misuzulu. Hogarth thinks she and her fellow travellers, who have been spreading xenophobia and tribalism at a school in Durban, should seek that kind of help as a matter of urgency.
Don’t leave me this way
In South Africa, being the founder of a political party does not guarantee your lifetime membership, not to mention leadership, of it. Remember Makhosi Khoza and many others whose dubious claims to fame rest on their being expelled from the parties they formed?
Well, in Zimbabwe things work differently. Following the news that former opposition leader Nelson Chamisa — who controversially quit politics a while ago, apparently to further his studies in the US — is back in the country, there has been a lot of talk about him forming a new political party to contest for power.
The problem, however, is that his old party is still around, and its interim secretary-general, Sengezo Tshabangu, says Chamisa “cannot start another party because constitutionally he is still our president. I will go to court.”
From this perspective, the Citizens’ Coalition for Change sounds like the Hotel California in that famous song where “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”.
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