Gerald Potash

Hello again,
 

The main story in all the papers this weekend was about Cyril giving the green light for Zuma to be given his free ‘Get out of jail’ card. This story is running and the DA has gone to court to oppose the irrational decision, authorised by a Zuma puppy, Arthur Fraser. What makes this action especially egregious is that the qualified medical parole team were convinced, after a proper examination of the convict, that he was well enough to stay in jail and accordingly opposed any medical parole.

The Helen Suzman Foundation is taking the matter further and yesterday launched an urgent application to the Supreme Court to have all the documents that lead to Fraser’s action revealed to them so that they can have the medical parole scrapped. Afriforum is also busy preparing their court action for the reversal of Fraser’s action.

In the meantime JZ is still in hospital getting the best care and it’s costing us taxpayers a fortune. He has already racked up costs in excess of R400,000-00 and he remains there instead of where he belongs, in prison.

Carl Niehaus, former spokesperson for the ANC, is a loudmouth, a liar and a fool and he works in Ace Magashule’s office as a spokesman for the (unofficial) RET (radical economic transformation) faction of the ANC. This week he went too far. He went to the police station, after inviting the press to witness his action, to lay charges for theft against the top 5 in the Party (should be top 6 but Ace is suspended—having been charged for corruption) for theft of his salary because the ANC is 3 months behind with their staff salary payments. They also owe SARS serious tax money for PAYE and this is no surprise since it is well known that their finances are in a mess. The ANC cannot manage their finances, they cannot manage candidate lists, they cannot manage SOE’s ………..what can they run properly? Not this country!

Well, it took exactly one day for the top shots to react and Niehaus has been summarily fired from the ANC. Except he doesn’t believe that he has been and is now going to court to oppose that action. In the meantime this is Rico’s cartoon from Business Maverick on the current financial state of the ANC showing the Secretary and the Treasurer of the party looking for the money that the cadres have “taken”.

Ace Magashule has made big news twice this week. Firstly, because his Foundation has badly let down students it is sponsoring in Turkey. The students made front page news on Sunday when their plight was highlighted in the press. These third year students made front page news on Sunday when their plight was highlighted in the press. They have been evicted from their residence at the university and are hungry, some are sleeping on park benches and some have had to turn to criminality to stay alive. Ace has not answered his phone or responded to messages of enquiry. Are you surprised?

The students were studying at the University in Istanbul where Ace was awarded an honorary doctorate in Philosophy in 2017. 

Then secondly Ace’s court application for an appeal to have himself re-instated as Secretary General of the ANC was rejected unanimously by the courts on Monday. They say he has no chance of succeeding with such an application after the case that they had heard had already refused him the remedy he sought. They were absolutely scathing when referring to his allegations that they, the judges in this case, were politically motivated against him.

Dali Mpofu, Ace’s (and Zuma’s) counsel was severely castigated by the judges for making-up facts about Cyril, who was a named respondent with the ANC in this matter. Not only did Ace’s appeal not succeed but he also was made to pay costs.

Not nice.

At last these loudmouths have been told off. The arrogant Magashule will no doubt take matters further and on the same facts, having been biffed twice, will more than likely take the matter to the Supreme Court of Appeals. Stalingrading runs in the veins of this bunch in the ANC.

A week doesn’t get off to a worse start than this, for anyone, but it is satisfying to see it happening to one of the most deserving characters of our criticism. This is a Brandan cartoon of the once big-shot:

Justice Malala, writing in the Financial Mail this week, makes the point that it will be lovely when the ANC realise that they cannot get away with all the corrupt practices that are now becoming exposed. He goes further in that article and suggests that the IEC life-line to the ANC to allow them to register candidates late for the up-coming municipal elections will make very little difference. He believes that the internal fighting and bickering in the party will make it unlikely that unity is achieved, consensus found and all the wards in all our municipalities will have ANC delegates.

I hope he is right.

He is not the only commentator who believes the ANC is coming to the end of its long rule. Maar ek weet nie so mooi nie.

(I’m not so sure). 

I won’t bore you with the details of our Public Protector’s latest embarrassment where in the matter where she had been gunning for Pravin Gordhan the Supreme Appeals’ Court ruled against her and not for the first time made her pay costs.

The President has accused her of being economical with the truth—That’s putting it lightly—

She remains an embarrassment, knows little law and must be removed, which Parliament is now considering…… to make her our first PP to be fired. Cyril was at his boring best on Sunday night but thankfully only spoke for half an hour when he reduced the level of our lockdown from level 3 to level 2. The biggest concessions are that it brings our curfew now to start at 11.00pm and restaurants & gyms can close an hour later oh, and importantly liquor stores can now be open on Fridays, too. But we still haven’t vaccinated nearly enough of the population and the campaign goes on with more and more walk-in sites springing up. We are now at just at the 15 million mark for vaccinations in a population of over 60 million.

The mess that is Eskom was highlighted again this week. Fire broke out at the Kendall power-station this past weekend and load shedding is on the cards again for us all. The farming town of Bethal in Mpumalanga has taken the local Govan Mbeki Municipality to court claiming that the power cuts of up to 20 hours a day are threatening the livelihoods and the health of residents. 

The good news is that Cape Town has topped the 2021 Travel + Leisures World’s Best Awards for the number one city in the Middle East and Africa. My question is who told them? There have been almost no tourists given that the country has been in lockdown for so long.

What is also very good news is that BLSA (Business Leadership SA) is lobbying very hard to with the UK government to take us off the red list. They are using some of the very biggest companies in the world in their endeavour. Hopefully the severe travel restrictions, with 10 days of isolation to SA, will be lifted next month.

An ex-cop from Durban has been jailed for six years for demanding a R300.00 bribe from a motorist. That is extremely good news.

More good news is that our sports stadiums are likely to be opened to fans who have been vaccinated.

Here’s hoping.

This newsletter has gone out to you on Wednesday afternoon (local time) as we get ready for our annual Fast day, tomorrow as i will not be at my computer at all.

The cricketers did pretty well in Sri Lanka in the bash & crash T20 stuff, winning that series 3-0 but that’s hardly cricket.  Apart from that;  what a dismal weekend, sporting-wise. The weather wasn’t great here, it rained again. With our dams already overflowing we really are having the wettest winter I can remember. The coach was with me on the couch to watch Tottenham Hotspurs humbled by London neighbours, Crystal Palace, on Saturday and then he was back again on Sunday to watch the Wallabies beat the Springboks on their Gold Coast. Neither result was expected but both the winners deserved their victories.

The rugby was as bad a surprise as the way that Spurs played. Spurs had an excuse though in so much as they were suffering injuries to some key players and during the game their star back was red-carded and so they had to play with just 10 men.  The Springboks simply made too many mistakes. If the Boks don’t lift their game very dramatically the All Blacks will eat them like biltong in a couple of weeks time. This coming weekend, again against Australia, we have a chance to see if they have learnt anything from this unexpected lesson down under.

Oh it’s hard to be a Spurs fan and it’s getting pretty hard to be a Springbok fan too.

As always,

Gerald