It has been an embarrassing week for the government as it flip-flopped on the inexplicable Eskom auditing exemption, cancelled the load-shedding state of disaster, and hunted for the Facebook rapist who has been roaming shopping malls for almost a year with no-one noticing.
But on Friday it got even worse.
Justice minister Ronald Lamola announced that South Africa's request to the UAE to extradite the Gupta brothers had been rejected. This was not even the most disappointing part — he learnt “with shock and dismay” on Thursday night that a Dubai court had concluded the matter nearly two months earlier, on February 13. This means the Guptas were able to spend Valentine's Day, free as birds, with the people who captured their hearts.
Hard to digest the news
Worse still, when the government finally caught up on the news through a diplomatic note, the summary of the judgment provided by the UAE was only in Arabic. Lamola noted that whenever South Africa communicates with the UAE authorities, it makes sure to use both English and Arabic.
“The summary of the judgment was in Arabic. We received it at 8pm and had to work overnight to interpret the summary. That is the life we have been living with the authorities in the UAE.”
Old Hog feels for Lamola. Next time you meet the UAE minister of injustice, greet him in Xitsonga so he gets a taste of his own medicine.
From Vanderbijlpark to Vanuatu
Maybe South Africa needs to cut its losses and move on ... as the Guptas obviously have. In the same briefing, justice department director-general Doc Mashabane revealed that the UAE court had recorded the Guptas as being citizens of Vanuatu, a string of about 80 islands in the Pacific.
The last the government heard, they had South African citizenship, Mashabane said.
Messy, not Messi, for Mpho
In South African football parlance, when fans say “Phakathi, inside”, they are referring to a goal, often a spectacular one. The DA’s Mpho Phalatse and her campaign team clearly had this in mind when they rocked up in blue T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Phalatse inside” at the party’s national congress in Midrand last weekend.
But alas, the only thing spectacular was the extent of their loss.
Having secured more than 80% of the votes, John “Vul’igate” Steenhuisen made sure the situation remained firmly “Phalatse outside”.
Let’s take the expensive option
As they say, a week is a long time in politics. And three weeks is probably a lifetime.
This week saw some progress in the SABC board appointment saga when ANC MPs accepted and adopted a legal opinion that stated the obvious: President Cyril Ramaphosa had no business instructing parliament to reconsider the names sent to him in December, and that any concerns raised after the parliamentary recommendation had no standing in law.
This was the same advice given to them, for free, by parliament's legal team three weeks ago. But wouldn't hear it, and insisted that changes could still be made. They sought external legal opinion and a senior counsel — charging the usual fee — spelt it out for them: Ramaphosa's instruction was “grossly unlawful”.
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