WeeklySA_AdminFAUX PAS: Ex-president Zuma’s shadow lurks in the corridors as Mkhwanazi spills the beans
FORMER president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party is probably South Africa’s luckiest political outfit.
Unlike other political parties – including the African National Congress (ANC), Democratic Alliance (DA), Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), Patriotic Alliance (PA) and others, which get a hammering on various media platforms on a daily basis – MK has received free advertising in the most unlikely of places one can think of.
One such platform is the Madlanga Judicial Commission of Inquiry, which this week began its public hearings into allegations of political interference and corruption in the justice system, sensationally revealed by KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Police Commissioner General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi for the first time at a media conference in July.
As Mkhwanazi took the witness stand on Wednesday, commission chairperson Mbuyiseli Madlanga and evidence leader Advocate Mahlape Sello briefly discussed a few housekeeping issues and agreed, among other things, to use the witnesses’ initials to sequence evidence bundles.
In case of Mkhwanazi, the commission’s first witness, Madlanga and Sello both agreed that his evidence bundles’ sequencing would contain the initials MK.
How they arrived at that determination is mind-boggling because these are not Nhlanhla Sibusiso Mkhwanazi’s initials but the first two letters of his surname. Call it witchcraft if you will.
This, however, had the unintended effect that the more Mkhwanazi’s startling and jaw-breaking evidence unfolded at the Brigitte Mabandla Justice College in Pretoria throughout the day on Wednesday, the more MK was repeatedly mentioned.
NOWHERE TO TURN
JUSTICE Madlanga must have turned and twisted a million times in his bed the whole night agonising about the faux pas of day one of the commission’s hearings.
This is probably the reason why his first of order of day two of the proceedings was that the evidence leader, Advocate Sello, must henceforth use witnesses’ surnames instead of their initials in the sequencing of evidence bundles.
He did not provide any reason for the about-turn, hoping no one had picked up the inadvertent promotion of Zuma’s political in the commission’s proceedings.
But it was a little too late as some annexures in Sello’s files had already been marked “MK” and were referred to as such in subsequent evidence led by General Mkhwanazi.
It just goes to show that you cannot keep Zuma away from the limelight even in matters that have very little to do with him.
FAILED SIDESHOW
DESPITE the commission unintentionally handing the MK Party free airtime at the start of its hearings on Wednesday, former president Jacob Zuma could not resist the temptation of staging a counter-attraction a short distance away.
The MK Party’s president-for-life filed an urgent application in the Pretoria High Court to stop the Madlanga Commission from proceeding, citing its exorbitant cost and questioning the constitutionality and legality of appointing an acting police minister (Firoz Cachalia) following the suspension incumbent Senzo Mchunu, who had been implicated in wrongdoing by General Mkhwanazi.
What followed in the high court’s proceedings were two free lessons of law handed to the MKP’s resident legal representative, Advocate Dali Mpofu, SC.
The first was from his counterpart, Advocate Ngwako Maenetje, for President Cyril Ramaphosa, who argued that MKP’s application to the high court was not urgent.
He said what Mpofu & Co should have done was to approach the courts to stop Cachalia from taking office.
“They tried but went to the wrong court,” Maenetje said, referring to the party’s failed direct access to the Constitutional Court a couple of weeks before.
The second free lesson handed to Mpofu was from Judge Ronel Tolmay, who, in delivering the judgment and dismissing MKP’s appliction said the law stated that if an applicant could not show evidence that [they] would suffer prejudice for the relief sought, then the case could not be urgent.
LegalStudies#101. We hope Mpofu SC took notes.
COLD COMFORT
ON which planet have Rand Water bosses been living over the past few years?
It is not on Planet Earth and certainly not in South Africa.
By all accounts, these suits have apparently never heard of Coronationville, where Johannesburg executive mayor Dada Morero recently pleaded with residents to endure another three weeks without water in their taps as the water crisis in Johannesburg continued to deepen.
They can also not point Kokotsi on the map of South Africa, neither do they know where Westbury, Tumahole, Bothaville and Maokeng, to mention a few townships and villages, are located.
If they did, their marketers and spin-doctors would not have had the gall to fork out tens of thousands of rands to place an advertisement on the Newzroom Afrika TV news channel claiming: “Rand Water keeps Gauteng, North-West, Mpumalanga & Free State flowing with clean, safe water.”
They would also not have boasted in the same ad that the water utility served more 18 million people across 37 000 square kilometers in four provinces.
That’s cold comfort to these and hundreds of other townships and villages in Rand Water’s jurisdiction who had for months not had even a drop of water to drink.
The water utility would do well by heeding the saying: if you don’t have anything to say, you better not say it.
SLIP OF THE TONGUE
“We are investigating the case of negligent firing of a firearm.” – Samuel Thine, Tshwane District Police Commissioner, following a16-hour hostage drama in Mamelodi, Pretoria.
