President Cyril Ramaphosa is off to the United Kingdom, the first head of state to officially visit King Charles III since his installation as the British monarch in September this year, and needed a stand in while he was gone. Photo: Supplied
Janusz Walus, the Polish right-winger who murdered Chris Hani in 1993, is getting out of jail, courtesy of the constitutional court ruling that the decision by Justice Minster Ronald Lamola to deny him parole in 2020 was irrational.
Jacob Zuma, the recalled head of state, is going back to prison — theoretically — after the supreme court of appeal dismissed his appeal and found that the decision to grant him medical parole was unlawful.
Neither decision is palatable, but both were inevitable, no matter how unfortunate the timing of the two judgments was, with both being delivered within hours of each other on Monday.
South Africa has a female head of state — at least for a couple of days — with Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga running the shop while the president is out of the country for a bit.
President Cyril Ramaphosa is off to the United Kingdom, the first head of state to officially visit King Charles III since his installation as the British monarch in September this year, and needed a stand in while he was gone.
Not a bad way for Cyril to run down the clock while waiting for the ANC electoral commission head Kgalema Motlanthe to announce the names of the 18 comrades who made the ballot for the top six posts in the party
One hopes that the lahnee will be able to complete his soiree with the former colonisers this time around — instead of running home to tell us that the lights are off, as he did on his last trip to Engerland.
My money is on Ramaphosa getting to stay for the royal banquet and all the fun bits, rather than dumping Charles III and heading home to Carl the Turd, now that the nominations are done and he is — at this stage — in the pound seats.
Ramaphosa will be pretty confident that he will be well clear of Zweli Mkhize — and whoever else makes the ballot for president — when Motlanthe names the names at noon on Tuesday.
Mkhize’s deal with ANC treasurer Paul Mashatile appears not to have paid off.
Mkhize’s supporters in KwaZulu-Natal, who nominated Mashatile as deputy president, are howling after the Holy Trinity’s people failed to reciprocate beyond the borders of the Kingdom, and instead nominated Ramaphosa as number one.
Politics is, indeed, a contact sport.
The comrades in the Kingdom have been scrambling for another deputy presidential candidate to, hopefully, nominate from the floor since the weekend, when they realised that they had been robbed, just as happened in 2017, but earlier this time.
Speaking of which, Ramaphosa’s deputy, David Mabuza, appears to have used up another of his nine lives in surviving a high speed collision involving his convoy at the weekend and is, understandably, recovering from his ordeal and not available to run the Republic.
It’s an indication of where the ANC is at that neither of the women who want the job full time after December — Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Lindiwe Sisulu — got the keys to the Union Buildings as a result of Mabuza being indisposed..
Rough, but understandable, from Ramaphosa’s perspective at least.
Both Dlamini-Zuma and Sisulu have demanded that Cyril step down before the conference takes place — either was likely to crank off an acting presidential edict recalling Ramaphosa or banishing him from our fair Republic for the rest of his natural life — before the undercarriage on the Inkwazi had been retracted on takeoff.
Autopilot Angie it is.
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