Do as I say, not as I do
Listening to all the testimony at the Madlanga commission strongly suggesting police minister Senzo Mchunu unlawfully instructed national police commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola to disband a police task team investigating political killings, Hogarth could not help but remember another minister Senzo Mchunu.
This other Mchunu served as minister of public service & administration and in 2021 said the following to a gathering of the country’s directors-general, urging them never to obey unlawful instructions from their political bosses: “We are not going to find it easy to turn the country around unless the first line of public servants — you as the DGs — draw lines [in] the sand between what is good and what is bad, what is correct and what is not correct.”
Surely, they can’t be the same person, these two Mchunus, can they?
Why break with tradition?
The minister, currently on garden leave while a professor acts in his place, is not known for being a traditionalist. In fact, Hogarth has it on good authority that part of the reason his tenure as KwaZulu-Natal premier was cut short was because he rubbed the then monarch up the wrong way by demanding his office comply with modern governance norms.
Hogarth was therefore surprised the other day to see the minister holding a meeting with traditional leaders from the Mchunu clan in what looked eerily like one of those sympathy gatherings Baba kaDuduzane used to convene in rural KwaZulu-Natal whenever he was in trouble with the law.
Perhaps it’s a provincial thing: when in trouble, convene amakhosi (traditional leaders) as a show of strength — and then call a lawyer.
Holistic education
Still on the province with a name and surname. Gone are the days when premiers would take large delegations overseas for engagements with “sister provinces” on “best practices”. Ramaphosa’s economy is so rough that when KwaZulu-Natal premier Thami Ntuli needed to take a large delegation out of the province, his purse stretched to travel only as far as Gauteng. The delegation spent much of their time riding the Gautrain and its empty buses as part of “collaborative learning to enhance service delivery in key areas”.
One trip delegate told one of Hogarth’s colleagues that, while he found the “interprovincial benchmarking exercise” forgettable, what will stay in his mind about Gauteng is that “every major street seems to have a water leak or has a hole dug and left unattended”.
Scooped by themselves
Much of that is not Panyaza Lesufi’s government’s fault, but rather that of the City of Johannesburg — run by one Dada Morero. Service delivery seems to be far from the city bosses’ minds as they confront a crisis wholly of their creation.
A few months ago, a member of the mayoral committee (MMC) found himself at the wrong place at the wrong time when police raided the home of crime suspect Katiso Molefe and found none other than the MMC on the premises. When questioned why he was there, transport MMC Kenny Kunene reacted by resigning his post and giving up his seat as a councillor. Morero and the ANC, it would seem, decided they would then give the portfolio to their new EFF buddies.
But Kunene and his Patriotic Alliance (PA) hired a legal firm that later found his reasons for being at the house to have been legit. The upshot is that Kunene wants his job back, but Dada is dilly-dallying. Now the PA is threatening to bring the ruling coalition in Johannesburg down and quit the GNU.
All this just because Kunene and his alleged journalist went to a suspected criminal’s home for an exclusive interview but still missed “the scoop” as it unfolded in front of their eyes?
To baiza or not to baiza
Seeing how much PA leader Gayton McKenzie loves his job as the Springboks’ mascot, Hogarth hopes “hy sal nie baiza nie” by resigning his cabinet post on Tuesday in an attempt to force the ANC’s hand. McBuffalo is no Morero and doesn’t take kindly to threats. If McKenzie doesn’t know this, he should ask one Andrew Whitfield of the DA.
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