WeeklySA_AdminJOB SECURITY: Special envoy’s diplomatic sojourn to the US still safely on course
with Sy Makaringe
FORMER Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas, recently appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa as South Africa’s special envoy to the United States, must not sweat about the possibility of him prematurely losing his cushy job for calling US President Donald Trump “a racist”, “a homophobe” and “a narcissistic right-winger”.
In a desperate bid to prevent trigger-happy US Secretary of State Marco Rubio from doing an “Ebrahim Rasool” on him, declaring him a persona non grata in the US that is, Jonas has since his appointment been at pains to explain the context in which he gave Trump these incendiary labels five years ago.
The MTN non-executive chairman should actually not have even bothered. There is nothing he said in the 2020 Radio 702 interview about Donald Trump that Donald Trump does not know about Donald Trump.
It was Donald Trump himself who was captured on video a year earlier saying: “I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world”. This was after he was criticised during his first term as US president for the racist remarks he had levelled against Reverend Al Sharpton and Elijah Cummings, two highly respected African-American lawmakers.
For good measure, Trump repeated the description about himself several times over, saying, for instance, “I am the least racist person in this room”, “I am the least racist person ever interviewed”, etc.
It does not matter whether one is a “least racist” or “most racist”, a racist is a racist is a racist.
Also, it was Donald Trump himself who, in his in inaugural speech as the United States’ 47th president earlier this year, said to thunderous applause from the Republicans: “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are two genders: male and female.”
Only a homophobe can utter or endorse such an ill-advised statement.
As for Trump being a “narcissistic right-winger”, the evidence is out there for everyone to see, especially after he and his crowd of sycophants in the White House befriended themselves with members of reactionary and anti-democratic rightwing Afrikaner groupings in South Africa such as Solidariteit and AfriForum.
In the unlikely event that Jonas is declared a persona non grata in the US, it will not be because of the truths he has told about Donald Trump, but because the person unleashing the guillotine is a racist, a narcissistic right-winger or even a homophobe.
BEDTIME DELAYED
WHITE House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was so annoyed on Tuesday after hearing that Joe Biden, her boss Donald Trump’s predecessor, was to address a conference of Advocates, Counsellors and Representatives for the Disabled in Chicago later that evening that she immediately switched into a combative mode.
It was to be Biden’s first public appearance since being pushed out of office by Trump on January 20. The idea of the former president addressing such a gathering at a time when the incumbent’s administration was lurching from one crisis to another spooked everyone in the White House.
That was because Biden’s speech was most certainly not going to spare his successor and his handler Elon Musk for, among other things, slashing jobs in the social security sector since Trump’s return to the White House.
The trade war with China, Harvard University’s defiant message to Trump to shove the $2.2 billion annual state funding in his own s**t hole, the “mistaken” deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a notorious El Salvador prison, the highly controversial crackdown on anti-Semitism and several run-ins with foreign students deemed to be terrorists, were among some of the burning issues the Trump administration was struggling to deal with at the time.
At this rate, criticism from Trump’s 82-year-old predecessor in the midst of all this organised chaos was surely the last thing he and his henchmen needed. As the White House press secretary, Leavitt thought the best way to deflect attention away from Biden was to portray him as a senile political has-been of no particular relevance.
Leavitt told anyone who cared to listen that she was actually shocked to hear that the octogenarian was going to address the conference at nighttime.
“I have thought his bedtime was much earlier,” she mocked.
Leavitt was probably right, especially given Biden’s disastrous showing during the CNN Presidential Debate between himself and Trump on the night of 27 June last year that saw the then president subsequently exiting the 2024 US Presidential Race.
However, Leavitt must always be careful about what comes out of her mouth. She forgot that her own boss, Melania’s husband, was 78 years old, turning 79 on June 4 and inching dangerously closer to being an octogenarian himself.
It was for this reason that our forebears warned the kettle many moons ago never to call the pot black.
JZ GOES HOME
BUT the octogenarian who knows his place after nightfall is none other than South Africa’s former president, Jacob Zuma, founder and leader of the uMkhonto we Sizwe Party (MKP), a political newbie that styles itself as Mzansi’s future governing party.
One evening in March the former ANC president was the guest of honour at the launch of Advocate Muzi Sikhakhane’s biography, Odyssey of Liberation – A Memoir of a Rebel Advocate, covered exclusively by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh’s media outfit and attended by the who’s who in the RET fraternity, imbongis, blind loyalists, hangers on, sycophants, political opportunists, you name them.
As the leader of a political party that helped to drag the ANC down to 40% in the 2024 general elections, Zuma revelled in the attention accorded him. His off-the-cuff keynote address was punctuated by several rounds of applause from people who have a deep affection for him and those who were there to buy his face.
They were still enjoying his jokes and anecdotes from his struggle days when he, apparently on realising it was almost his bedtime, cut short his speech and announced he would unfortunately not be spending the rest of the evening with them.
He upped and left, leaving many of his supporters hugely disappointed.
Just goes to show that when you are an octogenarian nothing trumps over your bedtime, pardon the pun.
JZ STAYS HOME
OCTOGENARIANS are a highly unpredictable and easily irritable lot.
Take our Umsholozi, for example. Thousands of his uMkhonto we Sizwe Party (MKP) supporters, clad in their party colours, thronged into the Eshowe Oval Sports Ground in northern KwaZulu-Natal last Saturday not only to celebrate his 83rd birthday with him, but also to demonstrate their political strength, especially in the wake of a series of by-election victories MKP had clinched in many parts of the country.
Everyone was upbeat and looking forward to listening to his address. The party’s leaders had made all the necessary arrangements to ensure his signature grand entrance at the packed venue went according to plan and his safety, security and comfort were not compromised.
Most importantly, the gig was also aimed at increasing the party’s public profile ahead of next year’s local government elections.
The only problem, though, was that the octogenarian birthday boy, the man of the moment, was a no-show.
The official explanation, issued way after the event, was that Jacob Zuma had always wanted to spend quality time on his special day in the comfort of his lavish Nkandla home quietly with, wait for it, MaKhumalo.
The unofficial word for the no-show, though, was that Eshowe, almost 120km from Nkandla, was “too far” and Nxamalala feared he might not make it in time for his bedtime after the birthday bash.
