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Aowa, the elders didn't sign up for this tiger madness

Vera Columnist
The writer cannot imagine how the likes of elder Andrew Mlangeni are supposed to grill Gwede Mantashe on his bedroom escapades with a young woman he knows to be his comrade finance minister Tito Mboweni's girlfriend.
The writer cannot imagine how the likes of elder Andrew Mlangeni are supposed to grill Gwede Mantashe on his bedroom escapades with a young woman he knows to be his comrade finance minister Tito Mboweni's girlfriend.
Image: Moeletsi Mabe

No pussyfooting about it

In all of this excitement about tigers, alleged control freaks, slay queens and brown envelope journalists, Vera would like you to spare a thought for the ANC's integrity commission.

This is a body, for those who do not know, that was set up by the ruling party to take to task those of its leaders whose public conduct puts "the glorious movement" into disrepute.

Its members are respected veterans of the Struggle. They include the likes of former Robben Islanders, George Mashamba and Andrew Mlangeni; 1956 Women's March leader Sophie de Bruyn and Catholic priest Smangaliso Mkhatshwa.

Now imagine good old Mlangeni having to grill Gwede Mantashe on his bedroom escapades with a young woman he knows to be his comrade Tito Mboweni's girlfriend.

Aowa Uncle Gwede, the elders did not sign up for this nonsense.

Tiger purrs in the house

Vera has always believed that Mzantsi will never have a politician as brave and shameless as that one who retired on the banks of Uthukela river not far from the historic iNkandla forest.

Phela that man had a liver, as they say ka Sezulu.

Now Uncle Gwede is showing Vera that he did learn a thing or two from all those Mondays - over a period of nine years - he spent with Msholozi at Luthuli House.

Kalokhu you have got to have a liver to be exposed as someone who is having an affair with your colleague's girlfriend and still turn up at work - in this case parliament - on the said colleague's big day, in this case Mboweni's medium term budget - and act like nothing has happened.

Horses for courses, tigers for...

Although Vera did not follow Mboweni's medium-term budget very closely, she did hear the finance minister say the days of "running to Father Christmas were over".

What Vera was not sure of was whether the minister was talking to state-owned enterprises or if this was a sub-tweet to his ex-girlfriend Lerato who is said to have complained to Sunday World that the minister was stingy, giving her R3,000 at a time, now and again, while the Tiger had a regular rate of R15,000 as his blesser fee.

Perhaps all of this proves that President Cyril Ramaphosa was far sighted when he made the tight-fisted Mboweni his finance minister and the feisty "Tiger" that is Mantashe, his energy minister.

Wake up, Slaap Tiger

Social media last week was awash with pictures of Ramaphosa dozing off during one of the sessions at a recent summit in Russia. The pictures were mostly circulated by self-styled Radical Economic Transformation activists who have not forgiven Ramaphosa for breaking the Gupta empire that used to run the Union Buildings.

Vera does not know for sure if Ramaphosa spent much of the summit in dreamland. She does remember, however, a president the Russians always complained about because of his tendency to fall asleep right in the middle of meetings with other heads of state and to blame it all on "jetlag".

On one occasion, the Russians claimed, the said president fell asleep and woke up to give the same excuse even though the meeting was taking place in the Banana City - in his own province.

Advantage whiteness, again

Vera has been studying the Desperate Alliance closely now that it is underwritten by the Institute of Race Relations. The party is highly critical of "race-based" BEE and argues that "disadvantage" can't be determined through race.

Their solution, replace a black leader who has the "advantage" of two university degrees with a white one whose "disadvantage" is that he has only a matric.

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