NKANDLA, an impoverished rural area in KwaZulu-Natal where the Machine Gun Man was born and grew up, has effectively given Mzansi citizens the president it does not want.

How else does one explain the fact that while the Machine Gun Man can do whatever he wishes, within constitutional and legal bounds of course, in the rest of South Africa, he is forced to go down on his knees if he wants, for example, to drill a borehole in his own hometown?

You see Uthungulu district, under which Nkandla falls, is IFP country after the party acquired almost 60percent of the vote in the 2006 local government elections, despite the fact that the Machine Gun Man was at that time easily the most popular political personality in the entire province.

But whether the Ain't Seen Nothing Yet and the Machine Gun Man want it or not, senior IFP member Zwelabo Zulu and the area's mayor call the shots here.

Voting patterns might change going into the 2011 local government polls, but for now the Machine Gun Man is effectively, and for all intents and purposes, persona non grata in this neck of the woods.

Perhaps people around here know something we don't.

Minister in sex-change scare

Has Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, the Minister of Correctional Services, undergone a sex-change operation?

Well, it seemed so last Sunday while Guluva was reading one of South Africa's most authoritative Sunday newspapers that styles itself as a quality Sunday read.

In its editorial - the hallowed and most sacred space of any newspaper - the publication wrote, without flinching: "Mapisa-Nqakula allegedly inflated the salary package of his director-general (correctional services) Thomas Moyane, going against a decision by cabinet which had already set an inclusive salary package."

Guluva's eyes almost popped out in shock. But he was assured, a few paragraphs later, that there was in fact no change in his favourite minister's sexual orientation when the leader writer wrote: "And if this does not constitute fraud, we wonder how Mapisa-Nqakula will distinguish between fraudulent tender (since she is heading a department that is prone to such) and a clean deal."

Phew! What a relief! You see, in Mzansi anything is possible these days.

Linguistic nightmare

What do the Tobacco Pipe Smoking Intellectual and the Woodwork Boy have in common? The two are at such extreme ends of the intellectual bar that it is inconceivable to even begin to compare them.

But, interestingly and strangely so, they share one common habit: their obsession to use the royal "we" when they talk.

The Tobacco Pipe Smoking Intellectual was in his element again last week when he gave interviews following the launch of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation and Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute, referring to himself as "we", saying, for example: "We spend three weeks in Sudan and five days at home." But in the next sentence he deftly changed to normal speak to avoid saying: "Even our wife asks us if we are visiting."

OFFSIDE: The SABC has given us another reason it cannot be trusted with broadcasting rights of any major sport in this country. At the weekend, while Guluva was watching a one-day international game between the Proteas and Zimbabwe on one of the corporation's channels, his TV screen suddenly went on the blink, disrupting the coverage for long spells. No credible explanation was given for the mishap.

lE-mail Guluva on: thatha.guluva@gmail.com