KWAZULU-NATAL education authorities were this month due to start the painful process of docking salaries of thousands of teachers who went on a protracted and bitter wage strike last year, while their Limpopo counterparts have already indicated they will start doing so next month.

Other provinces might soon follow suit after they all could not implement the salary deductions towards the end of last year, obviously to avoid unnecessary complications during the writing of end-of-year exams and disadvantaging the teachers during the financially-demanding festive season.

But Guluva has a funny feeling that the decisions to dock the salaries of thousands of teachers across Mzansi in the next few months might soon be reversed - again.

You see, the South African Democratic Teachers Union -the largest teacher body in the country - is a critical and delicate constituency of the ruling party whose needs, interests and concerns must be handled sensitively at all times.

In three months' time South Africa will hold local government elections and the Ain't Seen Nothing Yet government cannot surely expect thousands of teachers to go to the polls on empty stomachs.

That is clearly not the way to treat your important ally, or is it?

Good luck, Brian

Guluva could not believe it when he read somewhere that there were as many as 63 candidates who were vying for the group chief executive officer job of Transnet, which eventually went to former Public Investment Corporation boss Brian Molefe.

This might sound odd, but Guluva is happy for the 62 applicants whose bids for the highly rewarding job were turned down.

As Molefe will soon find out, Transnet is an unwieldy business entity in a constant state of deterioration that no amount of expertise, individual brilliance and resources can arrest in a few years. It is a perpetual work in progress.

But in reality, Transnet should be the country's catalyst for economic growth and one of its biggest job creators.

But with the Machine Gun Man constantly under pressure to create five million jobs in 10 years, Molefe will constantly find himself fielding questions from Mahlamba-Ndlopfu 24/7 on why "the jobs are not happening" if not putting out fires in all the organisation's combustible operating divisions.

Good luck over the next five years, Brian - you will definitely need it.

As for the 62 unsuccessful candidates, count yourselves lucky because you have saved yourselves from five years of sheer hell.

Back to drawing board

In a piece under the main headline "This pal is going to be jobless" on February 11, Guluva claimed that The Jupiter Drawing Room was responsible for coining the International Marketing Council's slogan "More Than You Can Imagine".

This claim was based on information made available by some of Guluva's highly reliable and always dependable media colleagues.

It has since turned out that, in fact, the payoff line was not created by TJDR but by another company as TJDR was no longer rendering services to the IMC at the time.

Guluva's colleagues got it horribly wrong, and so did Guluva.

Guess who has to go back to the drawing room, err, drawing board now.

Email Guluva on: thatha.guluva@gmail.com.