Hogarth was informed that, barely hours after the MK Party expelled supposed founder Jabulani Khumalo, the “real founder”, Jacob Zuma’s favourite daughter Duduzile, took to X to write: “There can never be two bulls in the same kraal... Especially when there is only one bull that built the kraal.” Many were still trying to decipher Dudu’s message when one of Hogarth’s all-time favourite former journalists wrote back to ask: “Do cattle build their own kraals?”
Hogarth will be camping by social media awaiting Dudu’s answer.
Stoopid reports
Media reports say the decision to fire Khumalo was taken at an urgent MK leadership meeting after the party received an “intelligence report” to the effect that the man Zuma had entrusted with registering the party as a political entity was now “working” with the party’s enemies to destroy it from within. This left Hogarth chuckling. “Intelligence report” is an old Zuma stick he uses to get rid of rivals and detractors. Remember how an “intelligence report” prompted him to fire a finance minister on the grounds that he had gone to the UK to rat on Zuma’s government to the Brits? Old tricks die hard, even if the old dog has moved to a new party.
From Ace-ocracy to Zumocracy
But while Khumalo & Co search for a new political home after being evicted from the Nkandla Stokvel, the Nkandla Crooner continues to attract new followers. The latest to defect to uMkhonto kaZuma is one Kwezi Toko. Kwezi Who, you ask? Toko was the national convener at the African Congress for Transformation, the minuscule Free State party formed by Ace Magashule. According to Toko, things aren’t going well at ACT. Magashule, who goes by the title of president-general over there, runs ACT like a personal fiefdom (because it is exactly that). He refuses to account for how party funds are spent, and insists the party will hold its first elective conference in 2031. Hence Toko’s switch to MK. Hogarth suspects he will soon find he has jumped from one autocrat into the arms of another.
Talking away his job
Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has been vocal in taking on those who claim there is something amiss in Eskom suddenly being able to supply us with uninterrupted electricity for a month. With elections around the corner, the electricity minister has made it his mission to convince the public that there is no link between the vanishing of load-shedding and the fact that the country goes to the polls next month.
“There will be multiple voices who seek to swell the environment because really they’ve been disarmed. There’s been a significant weaponisation of load-shedding. So some of them have used this as part of a campaign tool,” our minister of load-shedding told the SABC. “So when you remove it from their arsenal, they are exposed and they resort to unsubstantiated theories.” But what Hogarth would like to know is: Doesn’t the end of load-shedding mean Ramokgopa’s position is now redundant — or is Old Hog being optimistic?
Doesn’t the end of load-shedding mean Ramokgopa’s position is now redundant — or is Old Hog being optimistic?
Personally, it wasn’t personal
Now that the Pipe-Smoking One is back campaigning for the ANC after years of shunning the party, cadres are falling over themselves to explain how they were “misled” into backing the Nkandla Crooner for the ANC presidency in 2007. This week it was the turn of Fikile Mbalula who, as president of the ANC Youth League, handed the keys to Luthuli House to uBabakaD&D. At the end of a long speech in praise of Thabo Mbeki, Mbalula in a “personal note” explained that his 2007 opposition to Mbeki’s re-election as ANC president was “not personal” but based on a principle. Which principle? Since Mbalula went on to hold several key positions in government, Hogarth can safely assume that this was the principle of “I scratch your back, you scratch mine”.
Fear of the truth
Hogarth does not claim to have the best sources on the ANC national executive committee, but even he knew that Mbaks, aka Fearfokall, was spinning yarns at the gathering when he revealed that he was among NEC members who opposed the decision to recall Mbeki from office. This though he and his Youth League were the most vocal in intoning “makahhambe ngoku (he must go now)”.
At this rate, in 2040 Mbalula will be telling us he never, ever, supported Zuma’s recall in 2018.
Do like smart Alec
At the launch of a new book, a collection of letters the Pipe-Smoking One wrote for the party’s online newsletter, ANC Today, Hogarth was pleasantly surprised to see Alec Erwin, a former minister who left both government and the ANC in protest after Mbeki was unceremoniously removed from office in 2008. With Erwin back dancing with his old comrades, Hogarth’s mind went to one Mosiuoa 'Terror' Lekota, who formed a veritable political party to fight the ANC for firing his boss, only for his former boss to go and campaign for the very same ANC a few years later. What should he do, quietly sneak back like Erwin?
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