Tshwane, our fair nation’s not so fair capital, has a new mayor in the form of ActionSA’s Nasiphi Moya. File photo
Thursday.
It’s been a bluff-calling week, politically speaking, here in Mzansi, at Luthuli House and elsewhere.
The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) called the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party’s bluff after its representative, John Hlophe, resigned on Monday in a bid to stop the JSC conducting interviews for South Africa’s judiciary this week.
The JSC went about its work as planned and, by the time Hlophe’s resignation letter had reached parliament and, in turn, the JSC, it was too late for the MK party to appoint a new representative to replace Big John.
The JSC continued to chug along, merrily, without them.
Disco king Papa Penny will have to wait until the next JSC session before he gets his chance to represent the MK party on the interview panel.
Unless Hlophe manages to convince a court that allowing a disbarred judge to choose who gets to join the judiciary is the legal thing to do, which doesn’t seem all that likely.
Tshwane, our fair nation’s not so fair capital, has a new mayor in the form of ActionSA’s Nasiphi Moya after the ANC called Democratic Alliance (DA) federal chairperson Helen Zille’s bluff over her demand that it reinstate Cilliers Brink or face the consequences.
Zille’s threat to the ANC sounded a bit like Zuma did that chilly Saturday night at the end of May with his somewhat sinister “don’t rush” to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) to try to stop it from announcing the result of the national and provincial elections.
Helen’s ultimatum may have been a little less edgy and theatrical than uBaba’s when he drew a line in the sand to try to intimidate the IEC from declaring the election free and fair. But it had about the same amount of effect on the process she had hoped to reverse as Zuma’s threat on Showdown Saturday did.
Dololo.
Like the old man, Zille has been left behind, muttering angrily to her webcam, while the process plays itself out and Moya — read ANC secretary George Matjila — divides Tshwane’s mayoral committee portfolios among the victorious parties.
Zille must be cursing the day Herman Mashaba swapped slinging hair products for a blue T-shirt and signed up as a DA member, back when relations were copacetic, before their blood feud began.
As we speak Zille is in the depths of her bunker in misty George, hunched over the voters’ roll of every ward ActionSA has a councillor in — there’s not many so it won’t take her long — preparing to wipe them off the face of the planet, municipally speaking, on voting day in 2026.
She may not have to wait that long.
Mashaba is predictably unpredictable, so drama will ensue.
Herman has form when it comes to falling out with his coalition partners — ask Helen, or Brink for that matter — so my money would be against Moya still being in the Tshwane mayoral parlour come voting day in 2026.
After all, this time a year ago, Mashaba and DA leader John Steenhuisen had just finished signing the Moonshot Pact between opposition parties to remove the ANC from the Union Buildings.
Back then, John and Herman were part of the Multi-Party Charter for South Africa and, if not exactly friends, had put aside their beef that has been simmering since 2016 long enough to join forces with other opposition parties to try to dislodge the ANC from power.
Both swore never to enter into any coalition agreement with the governing party, the great Satan, politically speaking, as far as they both were concerned, which neither of the parties would never ever get into bed with.
Mashaba went as far as insisting that the Moonshot agreement contain a clause stating as much, ironically as a means of stopping John’s mob from going into a coalition with the ANC if they failed to dislodge them on voting day.
Twelve months later, never ever has he well and truly everred.
Not only has Steenhuisen dumped Mashaba for the ANC and a blue-light motorcade, but Herman’s people in Johannesburg — and now Tshwane — have dumped John’s people in the capital for the ANC and, of course, the Red Berets.
ActionSA and the DA have screwed each other at every level of government since then, with the ANC being the major beneficiary of their hunger for power in each and every case.
Not the outcome either of them signed up for or promised their supporters — a year and a whole lot of votes (or in Mashaba’s case, not so many) ago, but one which they, Helen and the rest of us will have to live with for the foreseeable future.