WeeklySA_AdminCASH COW: From the Imphepho Lady to Papa Penny, JZ doles out the moolah thanks to you the taxpayer
FUN GALORE
with Sy Makaringe
Many South Africans can’t resist the temptation to draw parallels or similarities between former US president Donald Trump and his South African counterpart, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma.
And that’s not without good reason.
Both are former heads of state in their respective countries. Both have, after leaving office, made courtrooms their second home. Both have, at one stage or another after losing power, been associated with rowdy louts who orchestrated an insurrection aimed at undermining the incumbent administration or sitting president. Both were cleared of direct involvement. Both have questioned the credibility of election results in their own countries. Both have an insatiable obsession with their predecessors, whom they detest with a passion. The list is inexhaustible.
But where they differ is magnanimity. Unlike Trump, Msholozi has a big heart. He generously rewards people who show loyalty to him, irrespective of their station in life, as long as the money he uses to achieve his objective does not come directly from his own pocket.
Pretty Xaba, who shot to fame (or is it infamy?) in 2006 during Nxamalala’s rape trial in the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg, is one of the earliest beneficiaries of JZ’s largesse.
Xaba a.k.a. “MaMkhize” a.k.a. “Imphepho Lady” led a strong contingent of noisy protesters in support of the Kanga Man, no, Nkandla Man, while liberally hurling tons of profanities at his rape accuser, Khwezi, outside the court.
MaMkhize burnt bundles of potent imphepo outside the court to exorcise the demons and make sure they did not follow him into the courtroom, where details of what happened on the night of the alleged rape emerged, including how he took a shower after sleeping with the HIV-positive Khwezi.
It worked. Zuma was acquitted of the charge, with Judge Willem J van der Merwe, taking liberties at Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, “If –”, saying to Zuma: “If you can control your body and your sexual urges, then you are a man, my son.”
That was in 2006. In 2009, when Zuma led the ANC to another decisive victory for the party in the general elections, he made sure MaMkhize, then a teacher assistant at a Tembisa primary school earning a paltry R2 500 a month, was parachuted to parliamentary politics where she was to earn a whopping R800 000 a year as he himself ascended to the highest seat in the land at the Union Buildings.
Finding herself completely out of her depths, MaMkhize the Imphepho Lady, spent the following five years as an Honourable Member dozing off through most of the parliamentary sessions.
Fast-forward to 2024 when Zuma’s new party, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), swept into parliament with 58 seats, beating the third-largest party, the EFF, into fourth place. In true Msholozi style, he is now using the party as a vehicle to repay old debts and reward his friends, at taxpayers’ expense, irrespective of whether they are suitable for parliamentary duty or not.
One of the MK members destined for parliament in the coming days is Eric Nkovane a.k.a. “Papa Penny”, a Shangaan musician and former smalltime Giyani, Limpopo, councillor, whose relationship with a classroom is as good as that of MaMkhize, Msholozi’s Impepho Lady.
Both have another thing in common: liberally throwing a barrage of expletives around.
Papa Penny once, at the height of his music career in the 1990s, threatened in a newspaper article to jump from the top of a multi-storey building in the Johannesburg city centre in his birthday suit if his recording company did not pay him his long overdue royalties.
Parliament promises to be the scene of high drama, colourful language and theatrics during South Africa’s seventh administration, the stage having already been set in the fourth edition by Julius Malema’s violent Red Berets.
In return for singing (for his supper), Papa Penny will now move from being a penniless PR councillor into a R1,2-million-a-year earner thanks to the taxpayer.
TRUMP’S ARITHMOPHOBIA
Former United States president Donald Trump will live, and probably die, with the ignominy of being the 45th president of the world’s oldest democracy.
Whereas the number 45 conjures up images and thoughts of things such as a 45-degree angle, 45rpm vinyl single records, Salusa 45 multivitamin tablets, Menocare 45 tablets, etc, but in South Africa’s township lingo 4-5 is associated with a male sexual organ.
That is probably why, not only here in Mzansi but also in the States and other countries, Trump’s increasingly growing cohort of detractors call him D**k, Pr**ck and other unsavoury names.
It’s a legacy he wants to wipe out from the memory of more than 333.3 million American citizens.
No wonder he has launched a spirited election campaign as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate against his Democratic Party rival and incumbent US Vice-President Kamala Harris in the race to the November 2024 elections.
Trump hopes, if elected, people will remember him only as the 47th president of the United States.
