Hogarth: 01 May 2011

Hogarth: Hogarth knows no political allegiance and is equally impatient with ideological lunacy be it peddled by the left, the right or the centre.

Dressing-down in order for a minister who dresses up

MILITARY analysts are agog at the naval uniform that Princess Sisulu, the civilian Minister of Defence, wore to President Zuma's Freedom Day fancy-dress party.

The single epaulette on the right shoulder would suggest a junior captain in the Royal Navy or a lieutenant or "master commander" in the US Navy.

The gold rope or aiguillette across her chest would make her an immigration officer in Ghana, an aide-de-camp to the president in Ireland, an "officer of a minor detachment" in Russia, a military aide to the president in the US or, when laced with dark blue like hers, a military member of the Defence Board in Britain. Without the blue, she would be an admiral or an equerry to a member of the royal family.

Whatever she intended, those big pearly earrings, forbidden to ordinary sailors, were a faux pax, but at least she didn't award herself any medals.

Don't follow suit

IMAGINE if this were to become a cabinet trend. We'd have Angie Motshekga in a gymslip, Blade Nzimande in flip flops, torn jeans and a T-shirt, and Fikile Mbalula in Spandex.

Heir's presumption

JOBURG'S wannabe mayor, the little-known Mmusi Maimane, this week told a handful of people desperately seeking an alternative in Soweto that his party was the only one that represented the ideals of Nelson Mandela and late PAC founder Robert Sobukwe. Would that include the PAC's "One Settler, One Bullet" slogan?

Blue in the face

GODZILLE was at pains to convince reporters at the same event that the police cars escorting her did not actually use the blue lights she has forbidden to DA worthies in her home town. She even got a policeman to vouch for her. Of course, the escort was parked at the time, so we'll never know.

Pulling their legs

STILL on blue lights, Hogarth hears that President Zuma told guests at his daughter Duduzile's wedding in East London that he was two hours late because he and the bride had arrived in a rickshaw. It did not have a blue light, but then it only brought them the last 100m or so.

Bling up, your majesty

THE Zuma convoy to the wedding gate was a different thing. The abundance of blue lights and limousines could have been a lesson to the head of our Commonwealth, Queen Elizabeth, whose convoy to her grandson's wedding comprised one motorcycle ahead of her very old car, and one Range Rover behind.

Bread AND circuses

THOSE chaps at metalworkers' union Numsa knew that, given the schedule clash between his May Day rally and the match between Sundowns and Chiefs, Zuma would be talking to a small crowd. So Numsa's Castro Ngobese, himself an avowed Pirates fan, appealed to the PSL to reschedule the game "to allow workers, soccer players and sports journalists to attend May Day celebrations as organised by Cosatu across the country".

And they did - by an hour - proving, as Ngobese put it, that the PSL was not "a sporting instrument of the ruling class to water down or liquidate working-class struggles in a post-apartheid, capitalist South Africa".

That would be paradox

THE Department of Rural Development is launching a National Rural Youth Service Corps of "para-professional" graduates of a new two-year skills development programme. Hogarth's dictionary says the prefix "para" means "alongside, beyond, resembling", and the department says the youths will learn "discipline, patriotism, life skills, rights awareness and specific skills areas empowering youth to change rural areas". Not carpentry, plumbing, building or how to grow things?

Ready, willing and -able

A COPE poster spotted in Mpumalanga: "Reliable, accountable, incorruptible."

Write to: hogarth@sundaytimes.co.za