A FAMOUS GROUSE

AMONG the more intriguing on-line reactions to last week’s Grouse about the SABC’s ambitious local content plans was a complaint that one had to read the entire thing almost all the way through before reaching the column’s last sentence.

Here at the Mahogany Ridge we could readily understand why this could be a problem in our high-speed, blink-and-you-miss-it, info-jammed day and age. Who can afford to waste time wading through an elliptical maze of words only to reach a conclusion which may or may not measure up to expectations?

Far better, we have now decided, to save everyone a bunch of trouble and put the coda right here at the top. Which is:

And don’t forget the pulling power of fried chicken.

But onto the meat of the matter this week: There was a slightly puzzling moment during Tuesday’s Q&A session when ANC MP Chana Pilane-Majake told the National Assembly that DA leader Mmusi Maimane’s question to the President about Nkandla was “full of Nando’s”.

There was some discussion, among the regulars, as to what she was on about. Some of us believed she meant “innuendos”. But this, surely, was not the case, for there was nothing indirect or subtle about Maimane’s charge.

It was as blunt as a flying mallet: Jacob Zuma had misled Parliament about Nkandla, not so? Despite his claims to the contrary, that he had taken out a bond on his private home, he had, in fact, unduly benefited from taxpayers’ money, had he not?

“I did not lie,” Zuma replied. “And your question is deliberately phrased in a manner that clouds the real situation. When I answered the question [in November 2012], I said the family built our home, not government. I even said by the time the government came with its requirement I started building, or extending my home when I was a deputy president, not the president.”

If anyone was hoping that Accused Number One was going to act as if he really was in the dock, defensive and browbeaten, it was not going to be anytime soon. Here came the classic Zuma tactic — once again he had out-dumbed his opponents. He has a natural aptitude for the obtuse that really does work in his favour, particularly where his continued survival is concerned. Stupid is almost a default setting.

And so he chortled away as the Economic Freedom Fighters raised points of orders and objections to being addressed by “a thief” — as one MP described him. He was delighted when they were forcibly removed by the so-called White Shirts, the parliamentary protection service. 

When DA MPs heckled him, he taunted them back, full of schoolboy arrogance and brio: “I’m a joke? Then you must laugh if I’m a joke. Why don’t you laugh?”

Well, possibly because there really is nothing to laugh about. 

For a start, Zuma seems unaware of the consequences of the reported plot by his hand-picked Hawks to have Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan arrested. It’s so barking whack that he still has no clue as to how financial markets work. And what’s the point in wanting to loot the Treasury when the rand is worthless?

But none of this matters. At least not to MPs like Pilane-Majake. Such is the President’s teflon coating, she and her colleagues in the ANC needn’t have bothered with the sweetheart questions about Operation Phakisa, the National Development Plan, and so on; all harmless queries aimed at giving a chance to haul out, once again, a few of those good news stories he has up his sleeve.

Meanwhile rumours of Gordhan’s imminent political demise continue to circulate. Business Day yesterday quoted economic analyst Peter Attard Montalto as saying the ongoing battle between the government’s “tenderpreneur” and “anti-tenderpreneur” camps was going to the former.

“President Zuma’s position appears to be more powerful and secure now than at any time since Nene-gate in December,” Attard Montalto said in a research note. “We think this is because the ANC processes have largely buried any hope of his imminent removal and also reflects power gained from captured security, police and prosecuting structures.”

To which we can add the voters, who’ve apparently also been captured — by food parcels and free T-shirts. Writing in ANC Today, deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte has taken issue with accusations that the party was “reducing voting to the provision of material gains”; the suggestion that people only attend rallies and other events in the hope of getting fed was “insulting to the voter”, she said.

Which don’t necessarily mean it ain’t necessarily so. The voter so far appears impervious to insults.

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.