WeeklySA_AdminCOMPLETE FAILURES: Sad tale of two top advocates whose track records do not match public expectation
with Sy Makaringe
EVERYTIME Dali Mpofu opens his mouth, one is usually tempted to sit up and listen, and listen attentively, to what he has to say.
It was no different the other day when Mpofu, a key member of the uMkhonto weSizwe Party’s brain trust who sometimes moonlights as an advocate, was hosted by no-nonsense EWN political journalist Tshidi Madia on her weekly podcast, Politricking.
Asked by Madia to assess the embattled National Director of Public Prosecutions Advocate Shamila Batohi’s performance now that her term was shortly coming to an end, Mpofu pulled no punches, describing her as “an unmitigated disaster”.
“I think (the National Prosecuting Authority) has been a complete failure [under her watch]. I think even by her own admission, she has definitely underperformed and underwhelmed,” Mpofu said in his signature, cheeky way.
It is difficult not to agree with Mpofu on this score.
Batohi, who was touted as Madame Fix-It when she took over the broken and fatally flawed organisation more than six years ago, has been completely out of her depths.
The high-profile criminal and corruption cases the NPA has bungled over the past six years are just too numerous to mention.
But if Batohi is an unmitigated disaster, as Mpofu says she is, what does that make him?
Over the same period that Batohi has been in charge of the NPA, Mpofu has been in and out of high courts in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and the Western Cape defending the same crowd of people.
But the number of cases he has won for his clients – including former president Jacob Zuma, former ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule, impeached Western Cape judge president John Hlophe and disgraced former Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane – can be counted in one hand.
One would say the two advocates are two sides of the same coin.
As Machangana-Vatsonga would say, timfene ti hlekana makovo.
This, loosely translated, means baboons mock each other’s deep, ugly eye cavities but fail to see or recognise that they, too, have the same physical appearance..
SICK COMRADES
WHEN Dali Mpofu, SC — South Africa’s master of the Stalingrad tactics — is not lurching from one high court to another to defend the indefensible, he whiles away time in Nkandla, where he chairs the uMkhonto weSizwe Party’s kangaroo court.
Away from intense legal debates and arguments in the mainstream court system, Mpofu finds his role as the chairperson of the MKP’s disciplinary committee not only therapeutic and entertaining but also revealing.
He has found, probably to his horror, that some of the rank-and-file members of former president Jacob Zuma’s party are actually a naughty, deceptive, dishonest and lying lot.
But in Tshidi Madia’ s podcast, Mpofu stressed that maximum discipline must be balanced with fairness.
“Discipline is one of the tools one must use to build a political organisation … Much as one wants to have discipline, but you have to be fair. Part of that fairness involves delaying tactics,” said the pro of delaying tactics himself, without any sense of irony at all.
While illustrating his point, Mpofu let slip on the secret that two months earlier a group of MKP “comrades” who had been charged for an unspecified offence all arrived at the hearing on the same day each clutching a doctor’s sick note.
“It was the most laughable thing that they all got sick just on the same day of the hearing,” he chuckled in apparent acceptance that he had been beaten at his own game.
WHAT THING?
ADVOCATE Dali Mpofu, a political nomad of note, does not think highly of his new political home, former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP).
Mpofu — who has moved from the African National Congress (ANC) to the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and to the MKP within a space of 12 years — revealed this much during his interview with EWN political journalist Tshidi Madia in the 12th episode of her podcast, Politricking.
Asked by Madia if he had any regrets joining a party that eventually became the official opposition in its first electoral attempt, Mpofu replied: “No, absolutely not. Remember, I was involved with this thing long before you guys knew that it was in the pipeline.”
This thing?
Surely, surely that is not the description one would give a political tsunami modelled as a government in waiting.
UNINTELLIGENT AI
ARTIFICIAL Intelligence (AI) is not as intelligent as it has been widely reputed to be after all.
When we put WhatsApp’s Meta AI to the test last week, asking it to provide us with relevant information around uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) Member of Parliament Eric “Papa Penny” Kobane’s spirited defence of his now-axed secretary- general Floyd Shivambu’s controversial Easter weekend visit to Malawi, it came back within the split of a second with the following response:
“Shivambu, the former Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) deputy president, faced criticism for his trip, but Papa Penny insists he had every right to visit Prophet Shiburi.”
We don’t know the Prophet Shiburi Meta AI is referring to here.
But what we do know is that the man of the cloth that Shivambu visited in Malawi was Prophet Shepherd Bushiri, head of the Enlightened Christian Gathering (ECG).
How Bushiri has suddenly become a Shiburi only Mark Zuckerberg & Co can answer that.
AI GETS IT WRONG
IN the same response, Meta AI continued: “In a viral video, Papa Penny passionately backed Shivambu, saying: ‘Anyone can go wherever he wants in the holidays … He never does anything wrong in his private life.’ This statement comes after Shivambu’s removal as MK Party’s General Secretary.”
AI got it wrong again here. Not once, but twice.
Firstly, readers of this column will probably recall that Papa Penny’s rant was aired o. social media shortly after Shivambu’s unauthorised sojourn to the southeastern African country and not after his sacking as MKP’s SG two weeks ago by the party’s so-called high command.
Secondly, Shivambu was MKP’s secretary-general and not its general secretary. There is a difference, AI.
It would seem that Meta AI might have unashamedly plagiarised the passage above, without verification, from an apparent fake media source.
At this rate, I would, to paraphrase the late Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, rather Elon Musk & Co keep their AI and let me keep my HI (Human Intelligence).was to address a conference of Advocates, Counsellors and Representatives for the Disabled in Chicst 120km from Nkandla, was “too far” and Nxamalala feared he might not make it in time for his bedtime after the birthday bash.
