Two days after McBuffalo proved himself to be volunteer-in-chief for the DA’s local government election campaign, the ANC-run North West convened what it called the Provincial Members Assembly in Rustenburg.
It was supposed to be attended by public representatives from the various spheres of government, including municipalities. But by the time the meeting was supposed to start, attendance was so low that one councillor told worried organisers: “Maybe councillors are in the Western Cape for benchmarking.”
Gwede the choirmaster
The ANC councillors attending Ramaphosa’s “roll call” must have suspected something was amiss when trade unionist-turned-party national chairman Gwede Mantashe showed no tolerance for their singing. Those who know Mantashe well will tell you that he sings or hums a struggle ditty whenever he gets a chance. But on the day, he would have none of it. As 4,800 councillors started singing a struggle gwijo, as per tradition, he stopped them: “I know that we have a lot of singing councillors, but we have got no councils. We all sing well, but capacity dololo [is non-existent] …”
Comrade councillors were not amused.
One needs a bad cop on occasion
Hogarth has a soft spot for SABC political editor Mzwandile Mbeje. An affable fellow and a true gentleman of the usually ungovernable journalism tribe. Which is probably why, when McBuffalo found himself in trouble with his own constituency for praising DA-run municipalities, he thought he had a chance to implement damage-control by granting a one-on-one interview with Mbeje. As you know, Cupcake hardly ever grants interviews, preferring the TV monologues he calls family meetings. But desperate times...
Hogarth can only suggest to Mbeje that next time Union Buildings or Luthuli House come calling, he should agree to the interview but take along his colleagues Samkele Maseko and Sakina Kamwendo. That way he can get to play the good cop while the other two put the head of state through his paces. Now that would be great television.
Mistaken Kases
Speaking of great television. Like everyone else, Hogarth was glued to his screen this week as the People’s Cop, Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, spilt the beans about the depth of rot in the country’s police service and the politicians who are enabling criminal syndicates to capture it.
Down in Mkhwanazi’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal, Hogarth has been told, there was a bit of excitement over the marking of all the files and other documents he presented to the Madlanga commission with the prefix “MK”. In a province where everything revolves around whether or not you believe the Nkandla Crooner was the best thing to have happened since Nelson Mandela, the use of “MK” made some celebrate him as their own while others claimed it exposed his hostility to Luthuli House.
Sorry to disappoint both sides, but the naming of the files had nothing to do with politics. MK for Mkhwanazi. Geddit?
All cows on the spectrum
Hogarth thinks it is a good thing that Mkhwanazi first appeared at the Madlanga commission before presenting himself to the parliamentary committee formed to investigate the same allegations. Imagine if he had started in parliament, as the EFF, MKP and other parties had demanded. They would have all sung the general’s praises, believing he would put the final nails in the ANC’s coffin, only to be shocked to learn that he holds no brief for any party and those he believes are crime enablers include politicians and friends of politicians from across the political spectrum — bar, perhaps, the FF+.
At least they have now been forewarned: in Mkhwanazi, they’ll be meeting a cop with no holy cows.
At least they weren’t paid
Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA is up in arms over a new book on Julius Malema by journalists Pauli van Wyk and Micah Reddy. What irks ActionSA most about the book is the claim that Mashaba, who was Johannesburg’s DA mayor at the time, allegedly turned a blind eye to wrongdoing by the Red Berets in the city.
So angry is ActionSA that it has gone for one of the authors, Reddy, pointing out that he is “brother to [a] long-serving DA staffer who previously served as Helen Zille’s spokesman”.
Hogarth hasn’t read the book and therefore can’t offer an opinion whether it is an attempt to tarnish Mashaba’s image ahead of next year’s local government election, where he is expected to run against Zille for Joburg mayor. But at least no-one is saying the two authors were paid R12m to produce a politician’s hagiography.
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