Diplomacy 101 for former ambassador
OK, Winston Churchill never said that “diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions”, but whoever did should have been listened to by the now former South African ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool. The former Western Cape premier who has spent the last few years working in the diplomatic space had the Orange One’s administration so hot under the collar for telling it like it is that US secretary of state Marco Rubio decided to ship him back to South Africa.
According to media reports, Rubio had sighted a talk by Rasool at a webinar organised by one of the local think-tanks as evidence that the one-time high-ranking ANC official “hates” US president Donald Trump and his administration.
Hogarth can’t fault Rasool for harbouring hostile views towards the Orange supremacist and his attempt to impose a new world order on all of us, but wishes the former ambassador had taken the words of US historian and philosopher Will Durant to heart before making an appearance at the webinar: “To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.”
SA won’t poleax Pollak
The Americans are so lucky that Rubio’s South African counterpart, Ronald Lamola, is not as sensitive to criticism as the US secretary of state. Trump local sympathisers, who include retired politicians and sections of the media, have been reporting with glee that the US president wants conservative South African-born US political commentator Joel Pollak as Washington’s chief envoy in Pretoria. Now Pollak has been making, to put it diplomatically, a lot of unkind remarks about South Africa and our transformation agenda. At times, the former adviser to Tony Leon — when the latter was DA leader — has sounded like an AfriForum stalwart with an American accent.
Fortunately Lamola and his boss President Cyril Ramaphosa, despite their many faults, are true democrats and wouldn’t refuse Pollak an opportunity to represent the US just because he is critical of them.
‘Tesla Chainsaw Massacre’ on autopilot
We are often told that some car salesmen are only one level above snake oil salesmen, but Hogarth still had to take a minute to recover after one such leader in his field — in an orange-hued skin — promoted electric vehicles this week on the hallowed lawns of the White House. This, he did, to stimulate sales after thousands of people dumped Tesla shares on the open market in protest against the founder, and the Orange One’s buddy, Elon Musk, who is now also head of a department that goes about cutting civil service jobs and other core services in the US.
All of this reminded Hogarth of a friend who called the plunging US economy the “Tesla Chainsaw Massacre”.
Kaizer Chiefs better at breaking ice
There were tensions in the National Assembly as the fedora-wearing finance minister Enoch Godongwana started delivering his long-delayed budget speech on Wednesday. MPs wouldn’t clap hands even when he said something they agreed with. Well, that was until he spoke about a certain soccer team.
Godongwana told the house that he had seen a social media post suggesting that the budget would only be delivered after Kaizer Chiefs had won a soccer match. Seeing how the Naturena-based and family-owned club battles to score goals and win games, some of Godongwana’s colleagues were worried. “In cabinet when I made this point, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa [an Orlando Pirates fan who defected to Mamelodi Sundowns once he became Tshwane mayor a few years ago] wrote me a piece of note and said “yo, this budget will never be tabled”, said Godongwana to roaring laughter from both sides of the house. Which goes to show, when in need of breaking ice, make fun of Kaizer Chiefs.
No sermons in the GNU church
Old hands at covering the budget know it’s never a good idea to ask Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago questions at the locked-up pre-budget briefing. What with him using responses to such questions to deliver long lectures on economics 101 and managing inflation, in his high-pitched voice.
Some scribes cringed when a broadcast journalist asked the governor to share his views on the inflationary implications of the VAT hike announced by finance minister Enoch Godongwana on Wednesday.
“Wrong press conference ... [wait until] next Thursday,” was Kganyago’s unusually terse response, referring to a scheduled briefing of the Reserve Bank monetary policy committee.
The room burst into laughter as serious economists and journalists were spared a sermon on economics.
Winter is coming for Viola
If it weren’t for the political joke that is Al Jama-ah leader Ganief Hendricks, North West MEC of education Viola Motsumi would have walked away with this week’s Mampara accolade. Motsumi was supposed to appear before the SA Human Rights Commission hearings on scholar transport. But the MEC had better things to do. It was revealed that instead of attending to the issue, Motsumi was seen on social media posting from Italy, where she is attending the Winter Olympics.
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