Hogarth: 31 July 2011

Hogarth does not suffer fools lightly and is compulsive reading for the millions of South Africans who share this intolerance.

Hush hush, don't wake the strange bedfellows

Itinerant MP Cecil Burgess - currently taking the ANC's shilling - loves nothing more than to flaunt his special access, as chairman of the secretive Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence, to the strange world of spies.

Just how strange emerged in this week's discussions about the need to counter something called information peddling in the secrecy bill currently being finalised.

"Security services very often, and to a large extent, rely on the gathering of information and very often this information comes from people, from sources. Very often these sources are, they are strange people and they do strange things and you don't know that they are strange people and you are not aware that the things that they are doing are strange and so you take this information in good faith," he warned.

Draconian law against strangeness to follow.

The formerly valid defence

What fun it has been watching the professional sycophants try to applaud both President Zuma and Chief Justice Ngcobo over the judge's decision to leave before his brothers on the bench told him to.

"Whilst we welcome the decision by the chief justice, we are of the opinion that President Zuma was firmly within his rights to extend the term of office of Justice Ngcobo," the ANC said before adding: "These developments will now offer the president the opportunity to appoint a new chief justice and reaffirm the independence of the judiciary."

"Comments that he acted unlawfully and outside the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa are false," Zuma's new spokesman, Mac Maharaj, said on Thursday. "The law was valid until today's judgement," he added after the Constitutional Court had ruled that the provision used was not constitutional.

"We wish to reaffirm President Zuma's correctness in his decision to extend Justice Ngcobo's term of office," said the office of the ANC chief whip in parliament. "We appreciate (Justice Ngcobo's) selfless decision, which was made in the interest of the integrity of the office of the chief justice and the judiciary."

So it was never broken, but it still needed fixing?

Don't touch the capital

The ANC kindergarten now styles its head prefect "Commander in Chief of Economic Freedom Fighters".

Now that it has been confirmed that Wee Julius Malema really is just a spoilt trust fund kid, Hogarth prefers to think of him as our very own Paris Hilton.

Big men, small change

The death last week of apartheid-era defence chief Magnus Malan reminded one of Hogarth's acquaintances of the terror felt by young conscripts at Voortrekkerhoogte in the early 1970s when they heard that they could be arrested for failing to salute when the great general's car passed by.

How times have changed. Cape Town student Chumani Maxwele discovered not long ago that you can now get arrested for saluting a passing VIP motorcade.

Tower to Babel, over

And that reminded Hogarth that PW Botha, when he was defence minister, publicly berated a senior officer after inspecting the first Mirage jet assembled at Waterkloof Air Base because it's instrumentation was all in English. Apparently half of the jets were to be English speaking and half Afrikaans speaking, but the English one got out first. With more official languages than serviceable Gripen fighters, that would be a difficult policy to implement today.

Chicken or a real beef?

This from an stewardess who had the misfortune to serve a fussy Trevor Manuel in the business-class section of her airplane: "What is the difference between Trevor Manuel and God? Answer: God doesn't go around calling himself Trevor."

The right formula

The Department of Health advises that this is National Breastfeeding Week. Hogarth suggests that with the experience of more than 20 children behind him, President Zuma is the man to handle the man-to-man part of that programme.

Write to: hogarth@sundaytimes.co.za