If Arthur Zwane (not the Kaizer Chiefs one) was a soccer player and the MK Party was a football club, he’d be calling his agent now and asking him to negotiate a transfer to another team. But alas, unlike his namesake, this Zwane chose politics as his game and opted for the turbulent Zuma party as his outfit. Hence he has to suffer his boss’s notorious mood swings.
In a space of just under over a month, Zwane has been promoted to secretary-general, forced to resign, had his resignation rescinded, got fired, and then reinstated by the Nkandla Crooner. Just as Hogarth was beginning to believe that the worst was over for the poor man, the Nkandla Crooner struck again. This time he has written a letter to Zwane confirming that he had fired him at the end of June for allegedly “misleading” the party. Without explaining what crime Zwane had actually committed, Baba kaDuduzile further warned Zwane that he, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, reserves the right to expel him from his organisation.
Shame, the old man must be missing the good old days when he could fire and hire ministers every other midnight and is now acting it out on this poor homeless chap.
No hope or charity from Faith
Speaking of firing, Luthuli House finally gathered enough courage to complete the formality of expelling the Nkandla Crooner from the ANC. Hogarth would not have been surprised to see Tony Yengeni leading a couple of ANC Zuma fans in a protest against the decision. But it looks like no-one in the ANC is having any sleepless nights about the fellow being expelled, not even Faith Muthambi — the former minister in Zuma’s cabinet whose rise to prominence was due to her faithfully holding on to Mshini Wam’s every word. She is now a member of the ANC’s national disciplinary committee and voted “yes” to the decision to expel the former leader.
As the saying goes, when days are dark, friends are...
MKP forgets which party to go to
The irony however, was that while no-one in the ANC shed a tear over losing a man who has been a member for more than 60 years, the party most offended by this decision was the one that stands to benefit — the MK Party itself. Baba’s new party has apparently even threatened legal action against the ANC. What, do they want their leader to remain a member of a rival political party? It is a funny democracy, as Zuma would say when he was still an ANC member with an office on the top floor of Luthuli House.
A picture is worth more than ...
They say there are no permanent friends in politics. But Hogarth still could not believe it when reports emerged this week that the leader of the African Congress for Transformation (ACT) party, one Ace Magashule, expelled 11 party members after they were spotted hobnobbing with his old buddy at his Nkandla homestead.
It is believed the group’s expulsion followed publication of their picture with the Nkandla Crooner on social media. This apparently annoyed Magashule, who allegedly ordered them to be expelled.
“These violations are intolerable and contradict the very foundation of our party principles,” said the ACT’s spin doctor Mohau Khumalo. “We are committed to maintaining the integrity, values and unity of our organisation.”
If you get fired from the ACT for meeting leaders of “fraternal” organisations such as the MK Party, imagine what Magashule would do if you were spotted with McBuffalo in Hyde Park?
'Shoot to kill' just got softer
The KwaZulu-Natal police have been under the spotlight these days for their “shoot to kill” approach to fighting crime. Every statement, for the past year or so, has read the same, with most of the criminals resisting arrest by firing the first shots at officers. They all end with a fatal shooting of the suspects. But it’s either that Friday’s statement was written by a different person or the provincial SAPS decided to change tack on how they report these shooting incidents.
“A police officer is in a stable condition after he was shot at by suspects during a shoot-out which left three suspected hijackers fatally wounded at T Section in Umlazi earlier today, Friday August 2,” read a statement from spokesperson Robert Netshiunda. It’s just a creative way of saying they were acting in self-defence.
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