The Week That Was

Gerald Potash,

Hello again,

For me the biggest story of the week was the forced return to SA of Ace Magashule’s one-time PA when Ace was wielding power in the Free State as their Premier. Moroadi Cholota appeared in court on Monday after being extradited from an American jail where she had been held for 4 months at the behest of SA to face fraud, corruption and money-laundering charges with Magashule–the one-time super BIG-shot in the ANC when he held power as the ruling party’s Secretary-General after being Premier of the Free State.

The charges relate to the “missing” R255 million in the asbestos tender case. (Have you ever wondered how Ace’s sons got so rich?) Cholota is charged with being the facilitator of the phony deals. 

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that her lawyer told the reporters outside the court that she has nothing to worry about because the State has nothing on her. We’ll see.

In the meantime since she is a flight risk she remains in jail.

Ace Magashule was also in the news during the week because of his fall-out with his one-time boss and best friend, Jacob Zuma. 11 members of Ace’s ACT Party were entertained by  Zuma at Nkandla and after the visit they were fired by Magashule who was not happy. The press reports that his party, ACT (African Congress for Transformation) is falling apart.

Zuma, always in the news, with his MK Party is also doing the illegal. He has fired several of the recently elevated MPs and now wants to replace them with his (actually, his daughter’s) choice of MPs. If they weren’t vetted by the Independent Electoral Commission they cannot be so elevated. Paul Hoffman has again written to the IEC advising them accordingly but at the time of writing he has heard nothing from them.

What is absolutely certain, to quote Justus Malala in the Financial Mail, is that Zuma’s return to active politics has wounded the ANC deeply. He is now going after the trade unions-communist alliance with the party that he once led. Up till now have been tied to the ANC. 

Zuma is already calling on teachers and education workers to join the MKParty via the Teachers and Education Workers Union. Malala sees this as a long war with many battles to fight, but for me the best part of it is the way Zuma is weakening the ANC.

This is story that will run.

The leading article in City Press this week has been about our 77,000 unsolved murders in this country. Yes, 66% of all reported murders remain unsolved. Week after week we read about our useless police force and this article underscores those reports. Almost 80,000 unsolved cases of murder have been closed  by the police since 2018. The City Press was not the only newspaper to pick-up on this story.

Karyn Maughan has received a groveling apology from most of Iqbal Survé’s newspapers. Those newspapers that had bad-mouthed her were ordered by the court to react within 7 days in the matter where Maughan took them to court to clear her name. This whole affair had to do with a toxic article published by a mysterious “writer” one Edmond Phiri. Phiri called out Maughan as being South Afica’s Leni Riefenstahl–the Nazi film propagandist & sympathizer who glorified Hitler. In the article “he” also implied that Maughan was a fake and a racist.  Phiri’s remarks equating Maughan to a Nazi is pure fiction. The article was written by a mystery man since no one knows who Edmond Phiri is. The Press Council further found that a posting by Iqbal Survé on X, after Phiri’s article was published did even more damage to Maughan. The Minister of Electricity is very upbeat about the state of our power supply. He has, however, cautioned about declaring that load shedding is over. He says there may be some hitches but generally we are now producing more power than is required. Thanks largely to doing the required and proper maintenance. Long may it last! This cartoon from Brandan in Business Day on Tuesday illustrates his point perfectly:

SA has a new, stunning beauty queen. She is Mia le Roux and she is beautiful (albeit deaf at birth) and she will take part in the Miss World competition later this year.

Some good news is that our government have recovered R1.9 billion. Our Auditor General is a tough lady who takes no prisoners and it is beginning to show. When she started her job in 2019 she had 25 auditors under her domain now she has 709.

Some bad news is that our unemployment figure has hit a record in the second quarter of this year. The official figure for jobless people is now 8.4 million (33%) . And remember that is only the official number. Those who have been without work for ages and have stopped looking for a job you are not counted in that number. If they were counted our unemployment figure would be more than 42.6%. Compare that to America where I believe the unemployment rate is less than 5%.

Some good news is that the Mayor of Johannesburg has, at last, stepped down –forced out of office is more accurate. The story is that Cyril asked him to go. The new mayor will probably be from the ANC and the Speaker will be from ActionSA. The vote takes place on Friday. But the city is a shambles and will take more than a few personal changes to recover. Dennis, that character of note did what he always does so well —- he got the usual suspects (sans Henry) together for lunch at the CT Press Club on Tuesday. We were there to listen to the Premier of the Western Cape Alan Winde talk…. and he talks well. He explained lots of political intricacies, like why there must be an opposition in Parliament and then he took lots of questions. Paul Hoffman of Accountability Now, almost as Winde was closing off, asked him why he had not once mentioned ‘corruption’.              

His answer was a droop in posture, a shaking of his head and an admission that this remains a huge problem. He gave examples and did not shy away from what Paul had asked. This is my photograph from Tuesday’s luncheon.

The Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver is in Cape Town. He has been spotted in several restaurants and listeners to Cape Talk have been phoning in to tell the announcers on our favourite radio station where they have seen him. Is he going to be doing one of his popular TV presentations here?

It was a dark and stormy (night) early morning when first the Coach and then Oom Dawie came to take their respective places on the couch to watch the rugby test. It’s winter and it’s cold and wet–Cape Town has surpassed its rainfall record stretching back to 1960– and the weather early morning on Saturday was no different. The Springboks played the Wallabies in Brisbane in far better weather aware that our record at the Suncorp stadium is abysmal. This time, however, the World Champions showed their skills and we ran out 33-7 victors.

The SA Proteas drew their away cricket test against the West Indies—largely because of rain . There is one more test to play.

As always,

Gerald

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