WeeklySA_AdminGRAVE PROBLEM: The populist rants of the Communist Party’s boss have divided the ANC-led tripartite alliance right down the middle
with Sy Makaringe
ADVERTISING and sponsorship have always proved to be two of the most effective ways through which companies could increase the exposure of their brands.
But, to extract as much value as possible, the choice of the medium is critical.
Marketers know that advertising a premium whisky label in an in-house Roman Catholic Church publication, for example, is unlikely to yield any return on investment. This is what government apparatchiks would call fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
Identifying an audience with a high likelihood of unlocking opportunities is always key. In other words, companies must advertise their products or services in mediums that accurately reflect the profile of their target market.
So, what were the directors of B3, an established high-end funeral undertaking business, thinking when they decided to sponsor the SACP’s 30th anniversary commemoration of the death of the party’s former general secretary, Joe Slovo, in Soweto earlier this month?
More to the point, why did B3 choose the SACP as a medium to sell its services?
You see, many of the party’s members are on the wrong side of 50. Their dream is no longer about owning that elusive luxury German car or living in an opulent double-storey home. Their main wish now is being given a final send-off in a glitzy and glamorous funeral.
That’s why it made sense when B3 prominently laid out an elegant branded carpet at Slovo’s graveside, creating a fitting ambience for such a memorable occasion. Another reason was probably that, by insisting the SACP contests next year’s municipal elections on its own, its incumbent general secretary, Solly Mapaila, is essentially leading it to the electoral slaughterhouse.
Worse still, Mapaila’s populist utterances could be regarded as akin to sounding the death knell for the ANC-led tripartite alliance as a whole, a situation that would be too ghastly to contemplate for the NDR.
MKP’S DYING TO LIVE
STILL talking about the funeral business and the dead, former president Jacob Zuma is now dabbling with the dying to keep his uMkhonto we Sizwe party alive.
Faced with an exorbitant salary bill and escalating running costs at its Nkandla head office as party funding is seemingly beginning to dry up, MKP is reportedly seeking to launch a funeral scheme to create a revenue stream to improve its cash flow.
This comes amid claims that R56 million it recently received from the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government has mysteriously gone missing, which is hardly unsurprising.
The MKP is taking this route on the back of the two million votes it received in the May 2024 general elections.
But the party might run into intellectual property complications. Moilwa Kabelo Moikgabi, of Mabopane in Gauteng, has already registered the name MK Funeral Services with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission and has been operating the business for a number of years now.
FACT-CHECKING MASHELE
POLITICAL analyst Prince Mashele made startling claims during an interview with podcaster DJ Sbu aka Sibusiso Leope in December.
These included allegations that former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe party was funded by Russia’s strongman, Vladimir Putin.
But Mashele provided no proof, except to rely on hearsay evidence peddled by foul-mouthed fraud-accused Louis Liebenberg, a discredited Afrikaner businessman, fake fist-clenching peacetime freedom fighter, small-time MKP benefactor and alleged dodgy diamond dealer.
Mashele also astonishingly told Leope that Mozambique was previously known as Lourenco Marques.
“People in Mpumalanga, the whole corridor of Mpumalanga from Nkomazi to Bushbuckridge, by the way not even Bushbuckridge but all the way to Limpopo, Punda Maria, those people are from Mozambique, even though it was not even Mozambique but Lourenco Marques,” Mashele said without batting an eyelid.
Of course, Masheke was completely wrong.
FACT #1: For over four centuries the People’s Republic of Mozambique was, as a colony of Portugal, known as Portuguese East Africa.
History books show the country was known as such until 1975 when FRELIMO, led by Samora Machel, swept into power to end colonial rule after a military coup in Portugal the previous year.
FACT #2: It was not only the country’s name that changed, but also that of the capital, Lourenco Marques, which was renamed Maputo.
Of all people, one would have expected Prince to know better. You see, the Masheles and Machels may be separated by the border and the difference in the spelling of their surnames, but they are virtually one and the same people and speak the same language, Shangaan.
FACT-CHECKING MANYI
MZWANELE Manyi, the spokesperson for the Jacob Zuma Foundation, made wild claims on the Phala Phala debacle earlier this month while discussing a letter that Zuma, the expelled former ANC president, had written to ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula demanding his party membership be reinstated.
Manyi told eNCA’s Jenna-Leigh Bilong: “Here is the president that has stuffed millions of dollars in the sofas and here is the ANC absolving him and pretending as if nothing is happening. What kind of integrity is this where people of this country go hungry and you have a president that is stashing billions of rands in the sofas and nothing happens to him?”
Much as the amount of money controversially hidden in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s game farm is jaw breaking, it was not millions of dollars or billions of rands as claimed by Manyi.
THE FACTS: Former spy boss and Zuma ally Arthur Fraser claimed, when reporting the robbery at Rosebank Police Station that the amount stashed in the couches was $4 million. Subsequent reports, however, put the actual figure at $580 000.
The later figure was quoted and confirmed by, among others, Hazim Mustafa, the Sudanese businessman who allegedly handed in the cash to buy 20 buffaloes from the farm, the SA Reserve Bank and SARS, both of which investigated the possible flouting of the country’s foreign exchange control and tax laws, as well the NPA, which is pursuing criminal charges against individuals who allegedly stole the money.
In today’s dollar-rand exchange rate, the $4 million falsely mentioned by Fraser is in the region of R75 million (not millions of dollars), whereas the second figure of $580 000 translates into about R11 million (not billions of rands).
Just goes to show that Manyi can’t really be trusted when it comes to money issues.
SLIP OF THE TONGUE
“THE Eastern Cape Health Department, I mean health hospitals or health centres, gave birth to about 221 babies who are today one-year-old.” – Ntsiki Nohiya, Newzroom Afrika’s Eastern Cape reporter, broadcasting live from Lusikisiki Hospital on Christmas Day.
EISH, THIS INGRISH
“WHEN young people left the country at the tender age and joined the ANC in exile, they were fathered by OR Tambo.” – Professor Ntsikelelo Breakfast, a senior Nelson Mandela University lecturer. He was answering a question on SABC TV Channel 404 relating to the quality of leadership in the ANC since its founding in 1912.
OUR IMPERFECT, WILD AND WEIRD WORLD
WHO said this?:
“But those issues were compounded by failures related to our critical infrastructure, our ability to get water – the most important thing our firefighters needed. We could not even get them water.
“And that’s not because of any one individual and it’s not because of any one budget cycle. It’s because for decades we have failed to prioritise building and maintaining critical infrastructure.”
Was it Mary Phadi, a feisty uMkhonto we Sizwe party member and leader of the official opposition in the Mpumalanga Provincial Legislature as she lashed out at the governing party, the ANC, in the wake of serious service delivery breakdowns in one of the province’s poorest rural municipalities?
Or was it Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri, the ANC’s national spokesperson, blasting the DA, the party that governs the Western Cape and controls the City of Cape Town, for neglecting to maintain or invest in infrastructure in black and coloured areas in the Mother City while allegedly giving priority to largely affluent white suburbs such as Camps Bay, Constantia and Rondebosch?
No, it was neither of the two.
In fact, the statement was not even referencing to any part of South Africa, a country that has for decades under ANC rule been plagued by crumbling critical infrastructure, serious water supply shortages, power outages and other crippling service delivery failures.
It was, instead, Traci Park, a Los Angeles City councillor, who made the comment on CNN on Tuesday after raging wild fires decimated hundreds of plush houses and other buildings in the Los Angeles County and claimed more than two dozen lives.
There is no doubt the Palisades and Eaton fires caught Los Angeles City administrators totally unprepared. In a desperate move to regain the confidence and trust of the ratepayers, who include filmmaker par excellence Mel Gibson and other celebrities, the local politicians have now launched an investigation into why fire hydrants were dry and the local water reservoir was empty. Sounds familiar?
They are also scrambling to put together what they call “a recovery plan”, a term you probably first heard here at home from Cyril Ramaphosa, our beleaguered president.
Indeed, politicians might not look the same anywhere in the world, but they strangely and eerily do sound the same.
