HOGARTH

Maybe honorary mayor of Stalingrad?

Aretired head of state is on the prowl, hunting high and low for a title, any title, to help him regain his sense of importance. Since being ousted from the Union Buildings five years ago he has tried everything — sending his favourite son to be chair of a small ANC branch in Newlands East (where’s that?); cajoling supporters to back his ex-wife for the ANC presidency; and even making a grand entrance at the party’s national conference in the hopes that delegates would elect him national chair. But everything failed. And so on Friday night he showed up at a venue in Durban where he had himself declared provincial chair of the South African National Civic Organisation. Hogarth suspects he’ll soon discover that Sanco is a dud and will once again be on the move, looking for a new host to parasitise.

Invasion of the orcs

T ired of the Lords of Darkness at Megawatt Park switching the lights off every other hour, Hogarth left the comfort of his home and joined the Desperate Alliance march on Luthuli House – our Mordor, where the Eye of Sauron, in the form of the deployment committee, resides. But Hogarth couldn’t tell if he was at a Blue Wave march or a gathering of Red Berets disguised in blue T-shirts. There was John Steenhuisen chanting “power to the people”; billionaire Rob Hersov calling for a revolution; and the marchers themselves, who looked very different to the DA’s usual bunch. Did someone rent a crowd?

Wedding or funeral?

Sometimes it is good to keep your private life private. Mpho Phalatse and her new husband, Brutus Malada, should know this. After their modest wedding in December, pictures of the couple were splashed all over social media in celebration. But it did not take long before this backfired. The usually celebratory wedding song Umakoti Ngo Wethu (the bride is ours) reverberated in sorrow at the Joburg city council offices this week as Phalatse’s mayoral ship capsized. Perhaps she should have learnt from ANC NEC meetings and had attendees store away their phones in brown envelopes.

Comrade Tiger sends Lions packing

I t would appear ANC national chair Gwede Mantashe has finally embraced the nickname “Comrade Tiger”. He earned the moniker some five years ago after a slay queen publicly shared the sordid details of a supposed romantic love triangle between her, Gwede and the pilchards master chef Tito Mboweni. At the ANC Free State provincial congress in Bloemfontein last weekend, Uncle Gweezy used the Tiger analogy to boast about the defeat he meted out to The Lions, a group that wanted to oust him last month at Nasrec. “You know in December, a team called Amabhubhesi (the Lions) was unleashed on me. And they really came for me. I called them and said, gentlemen look here, don’t cross the path of a tiger, you will get hurt badly.”