OUT TO LUNCH
It’s beginning to look increasingly likely that our beloved newly born GNU is about to be infected by, what for a better medical term, I shall call MK-Pox. Not a viral disease normally associated with ungulates admittedly but who really knows how these things spread?
I refer, of course, to the news that the newly formed MK party is about to reshuffle yet again and admit some controversial new members to parliament. According to a story last weekend on the Daily Maverick website Eskom CEO Brian Molefe, former Prasa CEO Lucky Montana and former Transnet CEO Siyabonga Gama are all on the lucky list waiting to be sworn in as members of parliament and servants of the great South African public.
Now the common denominator with these three is NOT that they have previously held very senior positions in state enterprises and must, therefore, have immense managerial talent and expertise to bring to the difficult business of running a country with a pathetically underperforming economy and sky high unemployment. Wouldn’t that be wonderful if it were true? ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
No, the common denominator is that all three have been exposed as dodgy characters by various branches of the legal fraternity and have faced allegations and charges which, depending on your view on these matters, should make them precisely the last sort of person you would want anywhere near the levers of power.
But South Africa is a forgiving nation, and we adhere to the trusted legal principle that a man is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. The obvious way to achieve this is to allow the National Procrastinating Authority to bumble along as it has for years by failing to bring a single state capture suspect to justice. It’s simple really, if you don’t get dragged to court you can’t be found guilty of anything so…ergo…you are innocent of everything and it’s just those pesky investigative journos and the white monopoly capital-controlled media who have it in for you.
It does beggar belief that people who have been accused of enriching themselves magnificently through the state capture era may soon be earning (by their standards) a modest income of R1.4 million a year as members of parliament plus all the perks that go with the job but that’s what may be about to happen. If disgraced former judge John (Slippery) Hlophe can be installed as leader of the official opposition anything is possible in the LaLa land of South African politics. This is simply another example of diversity, inclusivity and equity at work.
In order for the new boys to be installed it has been necessary to oust a few MP’s who appeared on the initial list of MK candidates. This they achieved by unilaterally cancelling their party membership, thereby disqualifying them from serving in parliament.
This has apparently caused some distress because, according to media reports, some of those fifteen who have been subject to the cull have already applied for car loans based on their newly acquired income and either won’t be able to keep up repayments now they are unemployed or have already handed back their shiny new status symbols.
Unsurprisingly the shenanigans within MK have led some within the party to accuse it of ‘cronyism’. They allege that party chief whip Sihle Ngubane and Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla orchestrated the moves to make way for some of their buddies who also hanker after a well paid job for the next five years.
Perhaps the fifteen should take heart though because at the beginning of July the then secretary general Arthur Zwane was sacked by the breakaway party’s founder Jacob Zuma, only to be recalled and then sacked again. In the whacky world of MK anything is possible.
Some accuse Jacob Zuma’s daughter Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla (sometimes referred to as Duduzile Sambhudla-Zuma in news reports) of being the prime mover behind the latest cull and there have been mischievous suggestions that she wants to turn MK into a sort of Zuma political dynasty by employing other members of the extended Zuma family. Since she divorced her husband back in 2017 one presumes she hangs onto the ‘Sambudla’ handle for sentimental reasons and not because of the popular trend for double barrelled names among some South African politicians.
Duduzile rose to prominence back in 2021 during the Durban riots when she used her Twitter page to encourage insurrection and criminal damage, usually ending her message with “we see you’. Strangely, this behaviour, while heavily criticised in the media, led to absolutely no legal consequences whatsoever.
This is odd because even my country of birth has been arresting, trying and swiftly imprisoning those who used WhatsApp and other social media to whip up racial hatred and encourage criminal damage in the riots that have blighted the whole of the UK over the past couple of weeks, even leading Elon Musk to predict ‘civil war’ in the UK. Many in the UK feel that the imprisonment of people for something they posted on social media is a sinister harbinger of a future autocratic state under the Labour party. But, equally, many others view the swift arrest and legal action taken against trouble makers to be a reasonable deterrent should anybody be thinking of setting fire to hotels which house refugees and immigrants.
So, knowing that she is comfortably untouchable by the law, one wonders what new surprises Duduzile and the rag-bag of MK members of parliament have in store for us for the next five years. Some political experts confidently predict that the party is such an administrative disaster that it will implode. However, if you have 58 seats in the National Assembly that works out to a salary bill of at least R80 million a year and that’s even before you venture into tenderpreneurism. With that guarantee of unearned wealth, who on earth would voluntarily give it up?
Since the MK party manifesto contains absolutely nothing that could possibly make the lives of the majority of ordinary South Africans better we can safely assume that their presence in parliament is more a toxic gathering of bitter resentments and score settlers. If there’s an opportunity to sabotage any possibility of economic progress you can bet that MK will exploit it to the full, trotting out the tired old cliche that we are the prisoners of white monopoly capital.
Most surprising though, particularly to foreign observers, is how a party that contains so many bad apples could even be allowed to contest a general election by the IEC. Again I say…you may die of many things in our beloved country but boredom will never be one of them.
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One can only catch one’s breath in sheer admiration at the dedication of the Gauteng Education Department in their relentless search for ‘racism’ in our schools. It is only equalled by those who travel to Drumnadrochit in Scotland in their search for the elusive Loch Ness Monster.
About twenty five years ago the comic genius Michael Wharton (who wrote the Peter Simple column in the Daily Telegraph) revealed the existence of the ‘prejudometer’; a hand held device developed by ‘Ethnicaids’ that, at the press of a button, could reveal the racism of anyone it was pointed at, measured in ‘prejudons’. Mr Wharton sadly left us in 2006 and technology has surged ahead since then.
So, with great respect to Michael Wharton, I am happy to reveal that an ‘app’ is now available which can be installed on a smart phone or smart watch and which will also detect ‘racism’ at a distance of up to 50 metres.
It has a ‘micro-aggression’ setting which is particularly useful should one be in any doubt that a simple comment such as “you sing beautifully” constitutes racism when directed at Pretty Yende. In addition, the app has a sensitivity setting so if at first you don’t detect ‘racism’ or begin to wonder if it might be subliminal all you need do is turn up the sensitivity until you get the reading you want.
I hear Panyaza Lesufi has already put a bulk order in.
