WeeklySA_AdminBAD LOSER: As it grows older, and wiser, this political infant will have to accept it can’t win all court battles
As the African National Congress (ANC) was stumbling from one organisational crisis to another ahead of the 2024 general elections, the uMkhonto we Sizwe Party (MKP) got off to a dream start, winning unprecedented admiration and accolades from many quarters.
In the courts, the former president Jacob Zuma’s new kid on the block gave the bumbling and floundering ANC and other opponents a hiding to nothing. It all started in the Electoral Court on March 28 when the ANC’s bid to have MKP’s registration by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) as a political party to be declared unlawful was thrown out, paving the way for the newborn baby to contest the all-important May general elections.
The ANC suffered another embarrassing setback in the Durban High Court in April when its legal challenge to stop the MKP from using the name and logo of the military wing of the 112-years-old political party, the original uMkhonto we Sizwe, also failed. uBaba’s infant, then five months old, was really punching above its weight. The MKP continued riding the crest of a wave in the courts when its expelled alleged founder, Jabulani Khumalo, failed in his bid to be reinstated as the party’s president, a position now being held by Zuma.
As if that was not enough, Parliament went against the country’s expectations when it allowed MKP’s deputy president, Mandlakayise John Hlophe, to serve on the Judicial Services Commission (JSC), despite the former head of the Western Cape High Court having been impeached as a judge a few months earlier.What’s more, the MKP won two more major victories in the courts when 10 of the 18 members it expelled from parliament failed in their Western Cape High Court bid to have their dismissals reversed. The same month, on September 24, the Pretoria High Court put the final nail in Jabulani Khumalo’s coffin when it ordered Standard Bank to remove him as a signatory to the party’s bank account. With all these court victories, MKP was on high moral ground.
But three days after Khumalo’s second crushing defeat, the Western Cape High Court reminded the party that in court battles, you win some and lose some. This was after the court had issued an order barring Hlophe from participating in the JSC interviews next week. After the granting of the interim order by Judge Johannes Daffue following an application by the Democratic Alliance, Corruption Watch and Freedom Under Law, the MKP came out guns blazing, crying: “We wuz robbed!”.
“The Umkhonto we Sizwe Party notes with great disappointment but with no surprise because, as we have always said, this judicial system is captured,” so said the party that has won far too many legal battles than it has lost.
HOW BIG IS KHABZA DE SMALL?
Parents are always warned to be circumspect when naming their children because the meaning of their names might just tragically become true later on in life.
This hypothesis is called nominative determinism. For example, if you name your lovely baby girl Vusiwana (Poverty in Xitsonga), chances are that she is more likely to grow into a life dogged by financial woes, hunger, homelessness and gnashing of teeth, instead basking in opulence and wealth as a beautiful, highly educated and successful woman.
Similarly, a baby boy named Mpiyakhe (His War/Fight in isiZulu) will in all likelihood end up being embroiled in violence or physical altercations than being involved in initiatives aimed at fostering peace and harmony.
Sun International once had a man called Peter Bacon as its restaurant manager. The Rand Water Board, the forerunner of the present-day Rand Water, was once headed by a man called Vincent Bath.
So, what did Mpumalanga-born DJ and record producer Kabelo Petrus Motha have in mind when he nicknamed himself Kabza De Small as his career was beginning to rise? Did he want to remain small or go big? Well, go big he did because in 2018 he shot into the international limelight, when he was aged only 26, with the release of his smash amapiano song Umshove. He went on to win more than 20 music awards. That’s big!
That was, of course, before the arrival on the music scene by the Queen of Popiano, Tyla, whose rise to international stardom has been incredibly phenomenal. In its “BIG P1 story” the other day, Daily Sun captured how the 22-year-old was cutting the big-name amapiano king down to size in two headlines: “Tyla upsets Kabza De Small” and “Tyla dethrones Kabza De Small”.
This was after Tyla had amassed five South African Music Awards nominations, while Kabza De Small walked away with only three, a far cry from the six he received the year before, reducing him to a relatively small player. Kabelo Petrus Motha must now be ruing the day he nicknamed himself Khabza De Small.
LIFE ON THE BRINK
Talking about nominative determinism, spare a thought for the Democratic Party’s Cilliers Brink.
The whole life of this poor man is akin to walking a tightrope, or living on the precipice. And it is all because of his surname. Brink’s life is so full of uncertainty that at no point does he know whether he is coming or going, sitting or standing, laughing or crying. He is always on the brink of the other.
When he is married he is always on the verge, or brink, of getting divorced, and when he is divorced, he is always on the verge, or brink, of getting married again. That’s how life on the brink is all about. Always!
So, when the DA’s national leaders were faced with the task of nominating a candidate for the position of executive mayor of the City of Tshwane two years ago, they just could not go past the suggested name of one Cilliers Brink, a longtime resident of the city and staunch member of the DA.
They just could not find anyone more suited for the mayorship of a coalition government in the capital city than Brink. That is because coalition governments in South Africa, by their very nature, are always on the brink of collapse.
Brink himself has always known from his first day on the job, on 28 March 2023, that he was always going to be on the brink of being fired, as hardly a passed without rowdy councillors from opposition parties such as the EFF and ANC calling for his removal.
The guillotine finally fell on his neck last week after his party’s erstwhile ally, Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA, ditched the coalition government at the City of Tshwane, precipitating Brink’s downfall.
But, guess what, Brink is now on the brink of returning to his job as the executive mayor of the City of Tshwane. The DA has given the ANC, its main partner in the Government of National Unity (GNU), an ultimatum to see to it that Brink is restored in his position.
Failure to do that, it is said not in so many words, will put the GNU on the brink of collapse.
