Thomas Johnson - The Blog

Premier Alan Winde wrote an op-ed in Daily Maverick about the auditor-general's (AG) purported "standards" that's allegedly preventing the Western Cape from meeting their service delivery objectives ( Service Delivery Must Take Precedence Over Compliance ).  His predecessor Helen Zille said much the same including in her DM column. This is either misinformation, ignorance or deliberate lies about the role and objectives of the auditor and audit respectively. Ironically, while the DA-run WC complain about the AG, they crow from the rooftops about the number of clean audits the AG gives them, showing their hypocrisy. A further irony is not even the ANC - corruption central - complains about the AG. What does that say about the DA's sour grapes. I don't understand them. It appears like his predecessor, Winde and WC staffs don't understand what an auditor does. Zille complained about staff allegedly quaking before the AG's "wrath" (sic). Wh...

There's been much commentary after the DA's recent implosion. RW Johnson , Jon Cayzer , Richard Poplak and one or two others gave good, fair assessments. DA apologists and supporters like James Myburgh acknowledge the party is in trouble but for different reasons.  However, the DA downplay concerns like DA MP Emma Powell  did last week (see here ). She attributed Zille's sudden, unexpected entrance into the race and election as FedEx chair, which caused Mashaba's departure and was the final nail for Trollip and Maimane and resulting furore, as observers not understanding its internal politics, ie it's so simple and we're overreacting. So within the party and among its supporters there's tortuous rationalisations, excuses and even blunt denials to explain away the worst crisis and crisis of confidence the party has had since 1994. The latest to offer a revisionism and apologia is James Myburgh, publisher and editor of Politicsweb (see here ). He'...

Emma Powell doesn’t get Richard Poplak’s assessment of the DA  in Daily Maverick . He did not comment on their governance in Western Province and Cape Town per se, which the IRR’s CEO Frans Cronje called a well-run bubble based on isolated examples, ironically, one was the police, a national competence. Poplak detailed, in his wordy style that’s not to everyone’s taste, how the DA gutted their hitherto liberal values, most of it under Helen Zille’s leadership, and their right-of-centre shift. Even erstwhile DA supporter RW Johnson thinks so (see here ). But Powell’s response is about the metrics, as she understands it, of good governance.   She doesn’t answer Poplak except saying he doesn’t understand internal DA politics.   It’s the card hustler’s trick of misdirection. To be clear, the DA is better, if not far better, than the ANC. But that’s only because the ANC is negligent, incompetent and corrupt and set a low bar. The fact is any political party ca...

Helen Zille lost her review application in the North Gauteng High Court for the Public Protector's finding her colonialism tweet was unethical. From her layman's and as the aggrieved, losing party's interpretation of Judge Malebo Habedi's obiter dicta ("personal observations", "irrelevant ruminations"), which he's allowed to do, one would assume it's as she says - he let his biases and conflicts of interest get in the way of his job (I'll get back to that). Last week Pierre de Vos, who's no friend of the PP, never mentioned any of Zille's issues in his analysis of the judgement . He said inter alia: the "judgement contains much of interest for people interested in the judicial review of bodies exercising public power, in general, and of the reports of the public protector'; 'the court proceeded to consider – and reject – all the arguments presented to it by Zille’s lawyers. To try and understand the reasoning...