Homeboy Musk trumps Trump

A new era in world politics begins tomorrow with the return of one Donald Trump as president of the US. Apparently our No 1, McBuffalo, didn’t crack an invite to the inauguration even though he had already tried to play nice with the orange one by inviting him to a game of golf when Trump visits Mzansi for the G20 summit in November. But it is no train smash. Nigeria and others may have their presidents there as guests, but South Africa has one better over them — we have local boy Elon Musk actually running the US president. Top that, Abuja!

The oligarchs are coming

Multibillionaire Musk’s influence over Trump and his incoming administration has had outgoing US president Joe Biden complaining about Washington falling into the hands of oligarchs in the same way the Russians lost Moscow to Vladimir Putin and his rich friends.

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that really threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedom,” Biden warned in his farewell speech.

Perhaps Americans would have taken the warning seriously if it wasn’t coming from the same president who used his power in his last days in office to extend a presidential pardon to his spoilt-brat son.

What's a stolen vote among friends?

McBuffalo may not have made it to Washington for the Trump show, but at least he did get to see another president inaugurated this month. Daniel Chapo is the new president of Mozambique, representing one of the ANC’s closest friends in the region, the ruling Frelimo Party. Much has been said about McBuffalo and Guinea-Bissau’s Umaro Sissoco Embalo being the only African heads of state to grace the inauguration in Maputo. But what did the critics expect? If South Africa could not see that the Zimbabwe 2008 elections were stolen by Zanu-PF, even when there was ample evidence, do they think it can turn its back on Frelimo-led Mozambique — especially at a time when the Nkandla Crooner’s MK Party is accusing the ANC of having stolen votes on May 29?

Wannabe sailor stranded ashore

Good thing the ANC only sent its first deputy secretary-general Nomvula Mokonyane and Andile Lungisa to represent it at the inauguration. Imagine if they had sent secretary-general Fikile Mbalula. He would have flown down to Cape Town and insisted that he sail to Maputo on a luxury yacht, to show off the successes of our national democratic revolution to the Mozambican comrades.

The fibs of an ancient mariner

Speaking of Mbaks and yachts, he took to JJ Tabane’s show on eNCA this week in a bid to explain why he had to be transported in a power cruiser belonging to someone who had benefited from state contracts when all his other comrades travelled on a rickety Robben Island ferry.

Asked why he didn’t take the ferry like everybody else, he said he had been in a hurry. “That day I had five lined up activities... It’s not like people were in Robben Island and the SG was gallivanting in the sea in a yacht.” Yeah right!

Most qualified to be fired?

Meanwhile, down in the province with a first name and surname, the old Zulu adage, umkhonto ugwaza ekhaya, about the spear that attacks its own, continues to play itself out in the ranks of the Nkandla Crooner’s party. The latest victim? MK Party treasurer-general Thanti Mthanti. Just last month, the party was excitedly telling all of us that it had appointed the most qualified person — a PhD in finance management — as its treasurer-general. But now it says he has tendered his resignation.

However, those who know the inner workings of the MKP say it only takes a whisper in Baba kaDuduzile's ear suggesting that an appointee is a sell-out for that appointee to be forced to write the kind of letter Mthanti did.

Let the rabble drink elsewhere

As anyone in the political and business elite would tell you, a joyride in Durban is incomplete without a visit to Max Lifestyle — a high-end shebeen owned by Max Mqadi, who counts many politicians, including Mbaks and the Nkandla Crooner, as friends. Mqadi has grown so rich from the government and corporate gigs he has hosted over the years that this week he had the audacity to tell an online audience that he actually didn’t need his day-to-day ordinary customers, whom he dismissed as “the come and goes”. It was his Marie Antoinette moment and this amper mampara must thank the Eastern Cape judge president for escaping the dubious honour.