The name is Mogotsi, Brown Mogotsi — the self-styled intelligence agent who went so deep undercover even his handlers didn’t know they were handling him. At least that is what the amateur political fixer claimed on Friday when he finally spoke during his last appearance before the Madlanga commission.
Having spent much of the morning trying to evade facing the commission by launching a futile attempt to have chief evidence leader Matthew Chaskalson removed from the hearings, Agent Mogotsi changed tactics in the afternoon.
“I don’t want to incriminate myself,” was his broken-record answer to almost all the questions Chaskalson and the commissioners put to him.
But even that approach could not save South Africa’s version of Johnny English. By the evening, he was in the police cells as an awaiting-trial detainee on but one of the many criminal charges that are likely to follow.
Flip-flopper in a Trump flap
While some are pretending to be top spies, others are walking around believing they are the rightful head of state.
Julius Malema, the EFF leader who has been calling himself the president-in-waiting since 2014, is apparently tired of waiting. Instead, he has decided to declare himself the rightful winner of the 2024 election.
Speaking on a podcast the other day, he claimed that the Electoral Commission of South Africa deliberately swapped the EFF’s and ANC’s numbers in the station where he voted, leading to the ANC being declared the winner.
In Donald Trump style, he then used that alleged incident to declare: “2024, I was robbed to be president of this country.”
The man must have a really short memory, because Hogarth recalls him saying publicly that the election had been free and fair when his erstwhile rival, Jacob Zuma, claimed they had been rigged.
The flip-flopper-in-chief strikes again.
Giving Tokoloshes a bad name
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s relatively swift decision to fire social development minister Sisisi Tolashe after a series of scandals that have made her an early candidate for Mampara of the Year was such a surprise that even the country’s premier business publication, Business Day, led with the story on Friday.
“Scandal-hit Tolashe axed,” read the headline.
Hogarth hears, however, that regular readers of the Daily Sun initially read the headline as saying, “Tokoloshe axed.”
Parliamentary pillow fight
McBuffalo seemed in high spirits as he made his first appearance before parliament since the Constitutional Court judgment. Presumably his good cheer was then boosted by the walkout by MKP and EFF MPs, leaving him to answer mostly sweetheart questions from the ANC and other parties in the GNU.
One young MP, Cleo Wilskut from the PA, struggled to have her question heard by the president due to her soft voice and the general hubbub from MPs. At one stage, her party’s chief whip, Marlon Daniels, urged her to speak in “your rally voice”. Still, McBuffalo couldn’t hear her. So speaker Thoko Didiza asked her to take to the podium to ask the question while physically closer to Cupcake. After Wilskut finally spoke, Daniels rose on a point of order, saying he had asked his colleague to speak in a “campaign voice, not pillow talk voice”. The speaker noticeably cringed as she rebuked him: “That is not a point of order, Honourable Daniels.”
But Cupcake giggled and joined in, saying, “I could not have pillow talk in public.” Disappointed by the sexual innuendo, Didiza could only say, “That is not parliamentary also.”
Men behaving badly, even in the house.
ANC Sugar Mummy League
With Cupcake officially informing the house that he had just fired Tolashe, ActionSA MP Dereleen James rose to ask if further action would be taken against the former minister. But coming from James, the question was delivered in colourful language.
“I want to ask, Mr President, will she be charged for fraud? Will her adviser, the Ben 10, pay back the money for the irregular appointment?”
Didiza had to intervene again: “I think languages of Ben 10 — I am not sure they can be used in parliament.” Fortunately Cupcake had the sense to not ask the MP to explain what she meant by a Ben 10.
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