Another week, another silly skirmish between a GNU cabinet minister and his deputy. When will this circus end? This time it is minister of public works Dean Macpherson vs his deputy, Sihle Zikalala — who clearly believes that his boss is a token appointee and he, Sihle, is really calling the shots.
With McBuffalo assenting to the Expropriation Act, the DA minister threw his toys out the cot, implying in social media posts that there’ll be no expropriation without compensation on his watch. “The guarantee of property rights under the constitution is not up for debate and is non-negotiable,” he wrote.
Zikalala contradicted him, praising the legislation for placing public works as “the executing authority of expropriation”. Its implementation, he added, will put the country on a path of “economic transformation and inclusive economic growth”.
But Macpherson was not about to let his deputy have the last word. “In terms of the law,” he huffed, “only ministers implement acts and regulations. Anyone who claims to speak for the department is just giving an opinion.”
It is time to swap the “national” in GNU to merely notional.
All mafiosos look the same
The longer the Desperate Alliance works with the ANC in the GNU, it would appear, the more they come to resemble each other. The Hawks this week raided the offices of two MMCs in the DA-run City of Cape Town. The investigation into safety & security MMC JP Smith and his energy counterpart Xanthea Limberg apparently has something to do with the so-called Construction Mafia that is hassling city businesses. Instead of encouraging the Hawks to conduct their probe professionally and without fear or favour, Smith and several DA big wigs took their cue from the ANC playbook and condemned the raids as a “political hit”.
Doesn’t that sound, erm, Baba kaDuduzane-ish? What’s next, blue “Innocent until proven guilty” T-shirts?
Desperate Alibis take time to find
Soon after news of the raids made headlines some social media users reminded us that the Desperate Alliance had no so long ago called on McBuffalo to remove his minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni — because the Hawks are investigating her.
“Lead by example,” urged one user. But Helen Zille was ready with a long rationale for why JP should be treated differently. “We do not even know whether he will be charged, what the charge might be, or whether there is any evidence to back it up. When a man has made such enemies of crooks, gangsters and some senior SAPS members, we exercise judgment and get the facts. That is what we are doing now.”
In her kitchen, what’s sauce for the goose certainly won’t do for the gander.
Wining down after holiday stress
No wonder that mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis decided to take some time off and chill at the Meerendal wine estate outside town. According to a local newspaper, the Tygerburger, he was there “to make his selection of wines from the Durbanville wine valley for the city’s cellar”.
Maybe so, but this was no wine-tasting where you take a sip, studiously swill the nectar round your mouth, then spit it out — a picture on social media showed him imbibing in a way that made Hogarth think he had lots of sorrows to drown.
A club for rape accused
US President Donald Trump’s inauguration was met with wild celebrations in Nkandla. The MK Party set new standards of sycophancy in its reaction: “This moment marks a pivotal opportunity for global politics to embrace justice, fairness and respect for national sovereignty. We view Trump’s leadership as a beacon of hope for dismantling systems of exploitation and oppression that were perpetuated under previous administrations.”
The Nkandla Crooner must be hoping that he, too, can make the same kind of comeback to power. Or perhaps he calculates that fawning over Trump — who has in the past fawned over Vladimir Putin — will play well in the Kremlin, Baba kaDuduzane’s spiritual home.
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