Is there hope for this team? Photo Matthieu Mirville / DPPI (Photo by Matthieu Mirville / Matthieu Mirville / DPPI via AFP)
Wednesday.
The Russian army is still in Ukraine; we’re still living under the Covid-19 state of national disaster and the Bafana Bafana squad members are — it would appear — better suited taking selfies with members of the French national team than playing football against them.
Not much has changed.
Granted, Tuesday night was a practice game, and France are France and we are who we are — footballingly and otherwise — but Hugo Broos would have been better served fielding the Ekurhuleni Eleven — that’s the Tembisa 10 twins in outfield and Pulitzer Piet Rampedi between the sticks — than the team that turned out against Les Bleus.
In parliament, not much has changed either.
President Cyril Ramaphosa is still dodging bullets.
The African Transformation Movement (ATM) attempt to move a vote of no confidence in the president by secret ballot has ended badly — for the ATM — with the matter ending up before parliament’s programming committee, rather than at the ballot box.
The ATM had hoped to take advantage of tensions in the ANC between Ramaphosa’s supporters and the “radical economic transformation” (RET) faction in a secret vote, to embarrass him, if not actually oust him from the post.
It’s failure to convince the high court that its plea for an order compelling speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula to allow the secret ballot — the court found that the urgency in the matter was “self-created” by the ATM — meant that that MPs would vote publicly if the motion went ahead.
After a couple hours of back and forth, the matter was assigned to parliament’s programming committee for a decision on how to proceed.
Ramaphosa-1 ATM- 0
The motion of no confidence in Ramaphosa’s cabinet brought by Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen did a little better — it actually went to the vote — but ended up in a cricket score in favour of the ANC, as was always going to be the case.
I’m not sure what John was attempting to achieve with the no confidence in cabinet vote — a laborious, MP by MP process that took hours to complete; wasted a whole lot of electricity and overtime hours for parliamentary staff and was always bound to fail.
Mathematically, the only way the motion could have been passed was if the cabinet members John wanted to remove voted in favour of removing themselves — not something that was particularly likely to happen.
Perhaps John thought that the cabinet members would vote against each other — and themselves — if the ballot were secret and they couldn’t see what they were doing.
Perhaps John can’t count.
The highlight of the cabinet no confidence vote was seeing agitated MPs — a fair number of them from the DA — vigorously and passionately attempting to get deputy speaker Lechesa Tsenoli’s attention, not to raise a point of order, but for permission to leave the chamber for a toilet break.
Ramaphosa and the cooperative governance and traditional affairs minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, appear to have taken my threat last week to lawyer up and take them to court if they don’t lift the disaster regulations soon, way more seriously than the no-confidence vote.
How else does one explain the fact that Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma — the de facto head of state for the past two years — have both made it clear this week that the regulations will be revoked in the coming days, instead of being left in place until 15 April?
Overnight, no more stonewalling; no more “sit down, honourable Steenhuisen”, no more shut up and wait till we’re good and ready.
All of a sudden, Ramaphosa is listening; doing the right thing; playing nice.
A fair result.
A selfie or two with Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma on the high court steps, all smiles and affidavits, after the court ruled in my favour, would have been a laugh — a bangin profile picture for social media and evidence of my 15 minutes of stardom.
Bringing out the freaks would also have been fun; a great way to pass the time while the lawyers got on with the boring bits in court — and a super opportunity to hang out with some old friends.
But taking Ramaphosa to court was a sure way of torpedoing any chance of getting an Order of Ikhamanga — or a seat on the presidential advisory panel on cannabis — any time in the next seven years, so the promise of a move back to normal governance in the next couple of weeks will do.
Thank you, Mister President.