MTN, a leading cellphone network operator with an enormous footprint in Africa and elsewhere, is so successful that it practically prints money every time it opens its doors for business.

The money the company rakes in makes the millions that Gidani, the country's national lottery operator, dishes out to lucky Lotto winners every week pale into insignificance.

When the cellphone network operator came up with a media campaign to support its Zakhele share scheme, which closed yesterday, it used the following phrase as its pay-off line: "One day is one day!"

If the company's marketing executives had disembarked from their high horse and done some homework, they would have realised that that pay-off line was originally Gidani's.

MTN might be rich, but it is bankrupt when it comes to the creation of ideas.

In simple terms, what it has done is called stealing.

Who'll protect us?

This can only happen in a banana republic: a gang of five men pretending to be complainants casually walked into a police station, produced firearms, held up police officers on duty and robbed them of their guns and other equipment.

This is what happened at Bedwang police station in North West recently.

In a normal country even the most hardened of criminals would not dare dream of targeting a police station.

But our policemen and women are so scared of members of the public that some police stations, especially in Gauteng, have hired private security companies to guard their premises.

With such law enforcement officers in our midst, what hope do we have in hell that they will protect us?

Cops' breeding ground

Still on matters of policing, a close friend of Guluva's asked him the other day if he had noticed that Sowetan had become more than a newspaper in the new Mzansi.

When she drew a blank she hastily answered her own question by saying the newspaper had now, and oddly so, become a breeding ground for police officers.

She was, in particular, referring to Musa Zondi, a spokesperson for the elite policing unit, the Hawks, who once worked for the newspaper as a subeditor and later environmental reporter; and Noxolo Kweza, his counterpart in the South African Police Service.

Kweza cut her teeth on the newspaper as a general news reporter and later became its political reporter.

Both Zondi and Kweza have assumed the rank of colonel.

During the dark days of apartheid the two would have been labelled sell-outs, and disowned by society.

In a democratic environment, what do you call them, Guluva wonders?

ONSIDE: Though it seems to have its roots in the ongoing intra-party political infighting, the withdrawal of bodyguards for the Woodwork Boy, the enfant terrible, is probably one of the most sensible decisions Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa has ever taken.

The R300000 the taxpayer forked out for the boy's so-called protection every month will now be put to good use.

OFFSIDE: The delay in appointing a director-general in the office of Gauteng Premier Nomvula Mokonyane - the post has been vacant for over a year - is negatively affecting service delivery.

Mokonyane and her Ain't Seen Nothing Yet bosses in Gauteng must sort out their differences and get on with the job.

• E-mail Guluva on: thatha.guluva@gmail.com