HOGARTH | Princess’s post puzzle

In this new world where you cannot easily tell reality from fiction, Hogarth has learnt to tread carefully when it comes to social media posts.

On Friday, soon after the Constitutional Court delivered its ruling on Phala Phala, a social media post purporting to be from Buffalo City metro mayor Princess Faku began circulating.

While everybody else was speculating over whether President Cyril Ramaphosa would resign or fight the impeachment process in parliament, the post under Faku’s name was alone in suggesting that the outcome was actually good for Cupcake.

“Kumnandi [it’s nice] our president is vindicated,” read a viral screenshot of the post.

The post subsequently disappeared, and the municipality, not the mayor herself, later posted that it was fake.

Hogarth doesn’t know where the truth lies, but it is telling that so many of the mayor’s social media followers readily believed that Faku, an LLB graduate of Fort Hare University, would so spectacularly misread a court judgment.

Gayton backs his World Cup ticket

McBuffalo might be sitting on his sofa right now — hopefully one not stuffed with US dollars — and wondering which of his cabinet ministers are plotting to oust him after the ruling. While he’d be foolish to trust anyone from his own party, one cabinet member who has already shown his loyalty is the Patriotic Alliance’s Gayton McKenzie.

Hours after the ruling was delivered, the sports minister took to X and posted: “All these new social media lawyers ... think they’re about to be admitted to the Bar, but don’t realise it’s not the same place you can buy tequila. President, let’s continue the good work we have started, we shall meet in Parly to do as instructed by CC [Constitutional Court].”

So much brown-nosing just because the minister realises that Cupcake’s resignation would mean the cabinet is dissolved and that the next president may not reappoint him as sports minister — which would mean McKenzie ends up watching the upcoming Fifa World Cup on TV like Mama Joy Chauke and the rest of us.

Minding his manners

Hogarth, however, cannot tell which is worse: McKenzie singing for his supper or Gen Bantu Holomisa, in the past a vocal critic of the ANC and its leaders accused of wrongdoing, displaying remarkable deputy ministerial manners.

EFF invites scepticism

Soon after the ruling, supporters of the EFF, which took the matter to the Constitutional Court, posted a video of former ANC cabinet minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma going against the wishes of her party and voting in favour of an impeachment process against the president. The vote was in 2022 and was at the heart of the EFF’s case, as the party believed ANC MPs wrongly used their parliamentary majority at the time to suppress a report that should have been put through an impeachment committee.

While Hogarth agrees that Dlamini-Zuma’s actions were indeed heroic and principled (on the DA), he could not help but wonder: if an EFF MP had done the same as Dlamini-Zuma and voted against the party line, would they still be wearing red overalls today?

Criticism that won’t fly

MK Party MP Mzwanele Manyi didn’t mince his words in criticising the defence ministry after it transpired that the state needs about R5bn to restore 20 Gripen fighter jets that are currently deemed unsuitable for combat.

“This is a direct result of years of ANC-led underfunding of the SANDF. External deployments have further strained limited resources, despite claims to the contrary,” fumed Manyi, who once served as government spokesman under Jacob Zuma.

No-one asked the honourable member whether, in those “years of ANC-led underfunding”, he includes the decade in which Zuma — who is now his leader in the MKP — was president.