WeeklySA_AdminBAIL-OUT: Penny for the public’s thoughts over Penny Penny’s forays in Parliament this week…
By Sy Makaringe
UMKHONTO weSizwe Party MP Gezani Eric Kobane’s competence as a lawmaker and his continued participation in Parliament have again been called into question following his disastrous performance during a meeting of the Portfolio Committee on Sport, Arts and Culture on Tuesday.
Kobane aka Papa Penny and Penny Penny was one of the MPs who “grilled” SA Football Association (SAFA) officials over the national football body’s parlous state of its finances.
The renewed public focus on Kobane came in the same week that saw the MKP’s Secretary-General, Floyd Shivambu, being stripped off his powers and redeployed to the National Assembly.
The party assigned Kobane to the portfolio committee presumably on the strength of his background as an artist.
But Kobane showed he was completely out of his depths when he started posing questions to SAFA Chief Financial Officer Gronie Hluyo. Reading from a prepared text, Kobane could be seen painfully ploughing through the questions, munching and mispronouncing words as he went along, to be bewilderment of the SAFA delegation, which included President Danny Jordan.
Papa Penny’s rise to Parliament has baffled many MKP members.
He was not on the list of MKP’s top 200 members earmarked for parliament, submitted to the Independent Electoral Commission ahead of the May 2024 general elections.
At the time he was serving as the ANC’s proportional representative councillor in the Greater Giyani Municipality and was campaigning for the governing party in the buildup to the polls. A known loyalist of MKP President Jacob Zuma, Kobane jumped ship to join his idol in the then five-month-old party literally a few days before the polls.
He was parachuted to parliament with prominent Zuma supporters such as former CEOs of Eskom (Brian Molefe), Transnet (Siyabonga Gama) and PRASA (Lucky Montana) in August last year after Zuma had sacked more than 10 of the party’s 58 MPs, many of whom had joined the party at its inception. Molefe, Gama and Montana, their alleged links to State Capture notwithstanding, were expected to boost the party’s profile and contribute effectively to parliamentary debate.
However, no one knew what value Kobane was going to add to Parliament given his brief dalliance with the classroom. This gave rise to speculation that Zuma wanted to use his popularity in Limpopo, real or perceived, to break the ANC’s electoral dominance in the province.
On Tuesday, following his unintelligible articulation of questions in Parliament, many people expressed their shock, especially on social media platforms, questioning Kobane’s suitability as an MP. Thami Maswanganyi, who lives in Gauteng but hails from Nkuri, the same locality that Kobane comes from, commented in a WhatsApp group after watching the shocking spectacle: “This is sad. It’s actually a disgrace.”
A Facebook user, possibly a Kobane sympthathiser, asked why parliament was not providing interpretation services to assist MPs with poor English language skills like Penny Penny.
Another social media user captioned the shocking video: Xikwembu Hi pfuni (for God help us in Xitsonga).
A Kobane supporter commented on Opera News: “Of course he (Penny Penny) is not an English man (sic). White people born and brought up in this country they (sic) can’t pronounce CELE, Mpumalanga, Mchunu nobody criticise (sic) them but an Africa (sic) who cannot pronounce an English or Afrikaans word he/she’s looked down (sic) as a fool. This is nonsense plus rubbish (sic).”
Kobane is not the first uneducated person to scale the heights of Parliament courtesy of Zuma.
After he became President of the Republic in 2009, Zuma shocked the country by rewarding a woman known as Pretty Xaba with a parliamentary seat.
This was apparently in exchange of the loyalty Xaba had showed him during his rape trial when she burnt imphepo outside the Johannesburg High Court in 2006 in his support.
For this, Zuma took Xaba from being a helper at a school in Ekurhuleni earning R2 500 a month to serving the country as an MP pocketing R800 000 a year.
Papa Penny’s poor showing in parliament has embarrassed even some of the most loyal MKP members and supporters, leading to speculation that pressure might soon be brought to bear on Zuma to redeploy him and save face ahead of the all-important 2026 local government elections.
