WeeklySA_AdminPROPHET OR PRESIDENT?: Look where the public trust in sweet-talking Ramaphosa and his Rama-phoria have put Mzansi
with Sy Makaringe
SO, when Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa said to South Africans “send me” a few months after ascending to the highest seat in the land, was he responding to their desperate cries for him to lead the country out of the morass created and left by his predecessor, Jacob Zuma?
Or was he thinking, for some weird reason, that he was a modern-day Prophet Isaiah answering a call from God?
Now, in the seventh year of his Presidency of no growth, massive unemployment, escalating crime levels, unprecedented incidences of unpredictable killer floods, the Covid-19 pandemic that claimed 102 595 lives and political unrest that killed 350 people, the following biblical scripture (Isaiah 6:8-13) might give us a clue on who or what Mr Thuma Mina really is, and probably why the country is in the parlous state it finds itself in:
“Then I heard the voice of The Lord saying: ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’
“And I said: ‘Here am I. Send me!’
“He said: ‘Go and tell this people: Be ever hearing but never understanding; be ever seeing but never perceiving.
‘Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.
“Then I said: For how long, Lord? And He answered: ‘Until cities are ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent us away and the land is utterly forsaken.
‘And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste.
‘But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land’.”
So, all along the modern-day Prophet Isaiah deadened our ears and closed our eyes shut so we could not question him of his real motives as he spun hyperbole and yarned tall tales about the New Dawn while our cities deteriorated into ruins and our once productive farms turned into a wasteland?
After enduring so much pain and suffering over the past seven years, South Africans could be excused for feeling they way they do about Mr Thuma Mina, shunning him en masse during the 2024 general elections.
That’s probably why they are now solely pinning their hopes on the holy seed they have been promised by God “will be the stump in the land”.
IS MKP THE HOLY SEED?
THE question now facing South Africa is: in which form will this holy seed that God promised in Prophet Isaiah’s vision emerge in South Africa?
It certainly will not come from the Government of National Unity (GNU), if the sharp differences between the two main parties, the ANC and DA, on issues such as the National Health Insurance, BELA Act, Expropriation Act and now the Budget, are anything to go by.
It also cannot originate from the EFF, whose electoral fortunes have been averaging 10% since its inception 11 years ago. God was probably referring to the EFF when he said in Isaiah 6:13: “And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste.”
So, will this holy seed come via Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe Party, which rocked South Africa to its foundations when it emerged virtually from nowhere to snatch 14,58% of the vote from under the noses of the Mr Thuma Mina-led ANC?
Probably.
I am reminded of this fellow, also named Jacob in the Bible, who, despite his infractions and indiscretions, won God’s favour. He first robbed his twin brother Esau of his birthright while they were both in their mum Rebecca’s womb. He then plotted with his mum to trick his elderly and dying dad, Isaac, into showering him with blessings instead of the deserving Esau.
Years later, Jacob concocted a devious plan to rob his uncle and dad-in-law, Laban, of his wealth. One night after fleeing from Laban and his angry children, Jacob had the temerity to exchange fisticuffs (some say he wrestled) with God.
All this notwithstanding, God forgave Jacob and fulfilled a promise he made to his granddad, Abraham, and dad Isaac – that he would bequeath his children a land flowing with milk and honey.
Maybe God has now forgiven our Jacob.
So, love him or loathe him, like it or not, Nxamalala could be the holy seed that will give rise to a new and prosperous nation.
PAPA PINOCCHIO
ENOUGH about sermons now.
uMkhonto we Sizwe Party’s pompous parliamentary puppet Papa Penny, who has been painstakingly attempting to convince other parliamentarians that he is not parliament’s Popeye after he was mindlessly parachuted to parliament by his party president, has added another label to his already dubious CV – parly’s Pinocchio.
Personally recruited to MKP by Jacob Zuma based on his perceived popularity as a Shangaan pop star, Papa Penny, the purported politician known for his knack for pampering poor people with food parcels, has been under pressure to produce proper membership numbers ahead of next year’s local government polls to justify his fat parliamentary pay cheque.
To pay Zuma back for putting parliamentary papa on his table, Papa Penny paid his base in Limpopo a visit to pinch a couple of members from his old political party, the ANC, after promising them imaginary seasonal “piece jobs” at an imaginary wine farm in the Western Cape.
After scores of poor villagers had put pen to paper, Papa Penny, the MK Party’s poster boy, packed for Nkandla to present his pesky and populist party president with the list of names of “new” party members, purportedly proving he was doing his best to swell party ranks.
Of course, it was all based on a fat lie. More than two months have since passed and no “piece job” has materialised.
Now, poor Papa Pinocchio is hiding in a pitch-dark cave somewhere in Nkandla praying, pretty scared of going back to his Sofasonke abode with an extremely l-o-o-o-o-o-n-g nose!
TALKS RIGHT, BANKS LEFT
SENIOR banker Thami Cele works for Postbank but does not do his banking at the financial institution, ostensibly because it is too low for his liking.
Even the bank’s unambiguous, in your face payoff line, “Your Bank”, does not seem to move him.
The elegant dresser and highly articulate communicator exposed his lack of confidence in the bank that pays his bills in an interview on TV news channel Newzroom Afrika on Friday March 28.
On the show, watched by millions of viewers, Cele spoke about the importance for SASSA beneficiaries with accounts at Postbank to migrate from their gold SASSA card to the black Postbank one.
He told the show’s host, Arabile Gumede, without any sense of irony: “You and I have a card, whether it’s a credit or debit card, with other banks, and those cards have an expiry date attached to them.
“And as the expiry date gets closer, we all have to visit our branches or have the cards delivered to us. This is no different to that.”
Cele’s preference to other banks is despite the fact that his own financial institution, Postbank, prides itself in providing “secure, reliable, accessible and affordable banking with more products and services than ever before”.
The bank boasts on its website that it has helped millions of people to “keep their fortunes safe and their minds stress-free”.
Just goes to show that when it comes to the issue of loyalty, one can’t count or bank on Thami Cele. Or is there something he is not telling us about Postbank?
WHERE’S KELLOGG?
HAS anyone heard from Keith Kellogg lately?
I am asking because no one has seen this 80-year-old son of breakfast cereal king WC Kellogg in public ever since he was appointed by United States President Donald Trump as his special envoy to Ukraine and Russia a few weeks ago.
Instead, the man who has been shuttling between Washington and Riyadh, Riyadh and Kyiv, Kyiv and Riyadh, Riyadh and Moscow, and Moscow and Washington, in an attempt to broker a peace deal between the two warring nations, is Michael Woltz, Trump’s adviser.
Actually, Keith Kellogg’s disappearance from the scene should not surprise anyone. The former US army lieutenant-general and presidential security adviser is too weak, too old and too slow for such an energy-sapping, pressured job in a fast-changing and highly combustible geopolitical environment with many moving parts.
Dealing with mean, twisted and dangerous world politicians such as Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and his temperamental Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former comedian (read clown), is not for the faint-hearted.
We had warned Kellogg at the time of his appointment that if he did not pull himself together, the Russians and the Ukrainians would eat him for breakfast.
He is now probably in the belly of the beast, which the complex international diplomatic environment is notoriously known to be.
