HOGARTH | Lawyers who can’t see the forest for the trees

Hogarth got into the newspaper business to report on politics, but as it becomes harder to tell politicians from criminals he spends more and more time watching the courts.

This week he was following the case of one Vusimusi “Cat” Matlala, who may or may not have been on his way to becoming to would-be president Senzo Mchunu what Atul Gupta was to Baba kaDuduzane. But a cop called Lucky Mkhwanazi put a stop to all of that.

Now Cat is in the dock, for what is likely to be only one of many criminal trials. But the witness who stole the show at the trial this week was one Mzamo Cele, a bodyguard who was involved in a shootout with alleged Cat associates attempting to kill his employer, taxi industry boss Joe Sibanyoni.

Asked by a defence lawyer about the number of trees at the scene of the crime, Cele told him: “I had not gone there to count trees, I was there as a guard.”

When the lawyer insisted on an answer, Cele retorted: “You are unfortunate because I can’t be working on this side and then count trees on the other… It is not my business to count trees."

Bodyguard’s evasive action

Later, under cross-examination, Cele stopped the proceedings — telling the judge that he was fed up.

“My lord, I am tired of this. We keep on doing the same thing, we are not going anywhere. Hhayi, I am tired. If it was a sin for me to protect the client… [I don’t know].” And then he addressed himself to the lawyer: “Don’t be too desperate, my friend.”

The learned friends were not pleased.

Eleventy-hundred rand in debt

Media reports indicate that Baba kaDuduzane has frozen all the MK Party’s accounts and appointed himself as its “accounting officer” as a “temporary measure” because the party is in debt to the tune of about R28m.

The Nkandla Crooner’s move comes just months after he fired the party’s treasurer-general Mpiyakhe Limba and replaced him with former Eskom and Transnet boss Brian Molefe. But it would seem that even Molefe’s vast financial management skills could not staunch the bleeding.

But given Baba kaDuduzane’s chequered history with managing his personal financial affairs, Hogarth won’t be surprised to hear next that he has fired himself.

Same old party trick

The man who started the MK Party with the Nkandla Crooner, Jabulani Khumalo, has started a new outfit — the African Renaissance Unity Party. Asked if this meant he has finally given up on his claim that the MK Party is his and was stolen from him, Khumalo said: “I want to correct that, I am not a former member. I am the owner. Zuma and his thugs stole it from me, so we are proceeding to the Constitutional Court [to challenge Zuma’s leadership].”

A politician who starts a new political party while still claiming to belong to a rival party — now where has Hogarth heard that before?

Crucifixtion — or witch hunt?

Meanwhile at the Madlanga commission, it was the turn of Andrea Johnson, head of the Investigative Directorate Against Corruption, to answer tough questions from the commissioners. Her appearance before parliament’s ad-hoc committee earlier this year prompted Julius Malema, with whom she shared a mutual friendship with disgraced cop Feroz Khan, to call her a modern-day Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

But in the Gospel According to St Pieter of Randburg, Johnson is in a different class to the mother of the nation — what Hogarth and the rest of South Africa witnessed happening to Johnson at the commission this week was, in fact, a crucifixion.

It must be Miracle24