It is always touching to see leaders showing compassion towards their political rivals in their hour of need. Hogarth therefore appreciated former president Jacob Zuma’s gesture of driving all the way from Eswatini to be with EFF leader Julius Malema in Limpopo as he and his family mourned the death of one of their elders.
However, the Nkandla Crooner lost Hogarth when he suggested that his presence at the Malemas was based on his belief that “there was no need” for black political leaders and parties “to be separated by the whites”.
“And therefore we must come to our comrades and be with them when they are mourning; we need to be together,” he said. “If we fail that, we would be assisting our enemies because it is us who are oppressed … Even if we are different parties, I don’t think we can fail to work together.”
Where was this “togetherness”, Hogarth would like to know from Msholozi, when his long-time comrades Patrick “Terror” Lekota and Nathi Mthethwa were buried?
Crooning out of tune
During his time as the country’s president, Zuma addressed no fewer than eight Freedom Day events in which he told us how the ANC had liberated South Africa. On ANC platforms, he urged the electorate to vote for the ANC “in defence of freedom”.
But now that he is out in the wilderness, he is suggesting that all this talk of freedom is a scam.
Speaking outside the Malema home he said: “We need to be together so that we can liberate the black people … It is a clear thing that if we don’t do that, we are going to be slaves forever … Even if people say we are free, we are not free. Not free.”
Not Yet Uhuru is a song that sounds completely out of tune when sung by a former president who had almost a decade to change things for the better.
Skeletons in a can
There are bosses, and then there is Msholozi’s successor. President Cyril Ramaphosa could have simply dismissed his police minister, Senzo Mchunu, after damning allegations made by the KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner, Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, over the disbandment of the SAPS’s political killings task team (PKTT).
But no, Cupcake decided to drag the entire nation through the trauma of yet another commission of inquiry plus a parliamentary hearing. Mchunu was sent on long gardening leave while a retired professor had to give up his peace and act as police minister. All so that the president could have the full information at his disposal before deciding what to do with Mchunu.
Meanwhile, Ramaphosa knew all along that the minister had no power to disband a police task team — as that is the role of the national commissioner — and that he lied when he told the two hearings that he had consulted the president about disbanding the PKTT. Both sackable offences.
Another case of Cupcake kicking the can down the road. At least this time, as it rolls down the road, skeletons such as Ekurhuleni metro police chief Julius Mkhwanazi, Brown Mogotsi and Sgt Fannie Nkosi tumble out.
Someone needs a straitjacket
Hogarth is too far from the Middle East to know for sure who is winning the war between the US-Israel alliance and Iran. But what is clear is that things are not going according to plan for the Orange One. If they were, he would not be having the kind of public meltdowns he has had on his social media platform, Truth Social.
After declaring that he had basically won the war, Donald Trump called on Nato member countries and others to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz to help free the passage for oil tankers and cargo ships.
But when the UK, France, Germany and many others refused, he claimed, “we no longer ‘need’, or desire, the Nato Countries’ assistance — WE NEVER DID!“
If he never needed them in the first place, why the earlier SOS?
But no-one wants a ticket
Among the Nato countries’ responses to Trump, Hogarth’s favourite was the one attributed to France’s Gen Michel Yakovleff.
A journalist quotes Yakovleff as saying that agreeing to join the US in the Strait of Hormuz would be “like buying a dinner ticket for the Titanic after hitting the iceberg”.
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