Yesterday, if I am not mistaken, was 5 November, Guy Fawkes Day, not Friday, 13 November. Yet what a day it was - a day of startling, almost miraculous, occurrences.
And bear in mind that these came hard upon the release of the "splodges of Wonga" coup plotters - saved, The Star told us, "by Zuma and God" (well, the newspaper was quoting one of them, Nick du Toit).
But help me out here: I thought it was our guys who helped nail them originally. Yeah, well, do we behave in a contradictory manner? So we do - that's okay, we are large, we contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman remarked.
Moving right along: according to Bobby Godsell, the Eskom chairman, chief executive officer Jacob Maroga resigned yesterday. An Eskom board member, Mpho Makwana, allegedly said: "It is a difficult time for Eskom. All that we can do is put our heads together ... Mr Maroga needs time to heal, we have to allow that process to go on."
Heal from what? The injury caused to his gluteus maximus by the weight of his wallet? Pass the sick bag, Bullfinch; I want to rest it on the scar of my hernia operation.
But the ANC youth brigades weren't having any of that codswallop and they/it issued a remarkable statement (see here). One of the great sentences in the statement reads as follows (and I quote): "The Board, which is under the manipulative control of Bobby Godsell, has tried every trick in the book to get rid of Maroga, including through increment of his salary amidst electricity challenges, so that the South African public can perceive him as greedy."
Who writes the copy for the ANCYL? Somebody should give this person a job as an editor. Also, I wish some of my various employers had tried to cast me in a bad light by increasing my salary. As it happens, they did the exact opposite.
What I don't know - maybe some readers do - is why the ANCYL, not to mention Public Enterprises Minister Barbara Hogan, are so upset by the rustication of Maroga.
I heard a grumpy Hogan say that Eskom's multiple balls-ups should not be blamed on one person. What can one say to the lady who went out to bat for the Dalai lama? Only this, I guess: we would have liked to lop off the heads of all Eskom employees, as well as Little Julie Malema's (for good measure). But alas we aren't as forthright about our desires as the Chinese. So it's the guys who get paid the big bucks and drive the big beemers who have to carry the can, Babs.
But, just as I was weeping into my still water about Jacob, I learned that South Africa's Olympic governing body, SASCOC, had suspended Athletics SA president Leonard Chuene, the Board of ASA, and its members, "with immediate effect pending the outcome of a disciplinary investigation and further action" over their handling of the Caster Semenya saga.
Furthermore (see here), SASCOC is considering "taking appropriate action against the IAAF for its disregard of Semenya's rights to privacy," following speculation over her gender [sic].
What happiness! The mills of the lord might grind slowly but they grind exceeding small. And then - well, you could have blown me down with a feather: government spokesperson Themba Maseko said the Cabinet had decided to terminate the multibillion-rand Airbus A400M strategic lift military aircraft contract.
"The termination of the contract is due to extensive cost escalation and the supplier's failure to deliver the aircraft within the stipulated timeframes," Maseko said. The original cost of buying the eight military airlift planes was R17-billion; going ahead with the deal would now mean paying about R40-billion due to cost increases.
Maseko said the decision followed a review of the contract by the ministries of defence, finance, trade and industry, science and technology, and public enterprises. He did not mention that the Democratic Alliance, known as the DA, had requested that the deal be terminated.
Talk about an early Christmas. And so much good news that it almost went unnoticed that minister of basic education Angie Motshekga has said that the outcomes based education (OBE) method of teaching had been a failure and teachers can get back to teaching and edjamacation.
But one of the most interesting occurrences of yesterday - at least for me - was this. I was visiting the Johannesburg high court - now called the South Gauteng high court, as opposed to the Pretoria or North Gauteng high court - standing around under that echoing and mosque-like cupola covering the foyer of the "new" section of the court.
It was about midday and a colleague and I were about to launch a surprise raid on the records and archives offices when I espied former national commissioner of police, Jackie Selebi - the man I used to call the "fat commish".
The strange thing about him was that he - and his wife and someone who appeared to be a sort of female minder of maybe just a friend - were all alone in the court foyer. They looked pretty forlorn and cut loose.
Where were the vigilant members of the fourth estate? When I was a boy and a bit, we reporters would have been all over the man like a rash, trying to get comments to spice up the court narrative. But I suppose that the Muller person had just given evidence (see here) and the doughty members of the fourth estate must have been busy filing their breathless copy.
So I went over to chat to the ex-fat commish. He seemed battered - so much so that it was as though he had not slept for weeks (maybe he hasn't) and was not quite with us.
"Do you remember me?" I asked him, referring to an interview I once had with Selebi at his office in De Wachthuis in Pretoria on a Saturday afternoon. I'd gone there with Eleanor "mommies" Momberg, a colleague from The Sunday Independent. And we'd written an article, quoting the national commissioner as saying that all allegations made against him were "rubbish".
Of course Selebi would later be charged and Vusi Pikoli, the national director of public prosecutions, would lose his job over the national police commissioner, and so on and so forth - and I would never be allowed to live that story down, especially not by Sam "Shmulik" Sole and Stefaans Brummer of the Mail&Grauniad, who felt rather aggrieved, to put it mildly, that Momberg and I had suggested that maybe they might be wrong about the fat commish.
"Yes," said Selebi yesterday, "you're the one that said that I said that Agliotti was my friend ‘finish and klaar'."
"No,' I said, looking perplexed, "that wasn't me".
Because in fact it hadn't been me - it'd been Sole or Brummer. Or, actually, I think it was Brummer to whom Selebi said it. And, well, Brummer is a young, good-looking fellow, so if Selebi wanted to confuse me with Brummer, that was okay.
Still, for the record, I said to Selebi that it hadn't been me. "It was you," he insisted and wouldn't hear otherwise, albeit in a very ethereal sort of way.
Strange day, indeed. Do you think someone slipped some essence of marijuana into the Gauteng drinking water? I'm a bit frightened about tomorrow. Will Helen Zille join the tripartite alliance? Will Paul Trewhela stop harrumphing about the state of South Africa and its authors? Will Little Julie Malema be appointed editor of The Star?
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