14th May 2013 - Cape Town

Mswati and hangers on

Roy and I have just returned from the Taj Hotel in Cape Town where we attended the World Economic Forum on Africa, a global conference seeking solutions to poverty in Africa, a futile exercise in most eyes & a goal that has long lost any fundamental substance. At the last minute we were told that our booking at the hotel had been commandeered by the last absolute ruling monarch in the world, the Swaziland King Mswati, with his troupe of tribal hangers on who collectively had occupied 38 rooms. 

Kit Kat snacking on way to breakfast

The Royal entourage only included one of his thirteen wives, 'Kit Kat' Lamotsee, who nevertheless required a king size bed aligned next to the king's bed, while the other twelve wives were left behind toiling on home soil to spruce up the European funded palaces that litter the outskirts of the capital, Mbabane. Lamotsee's first breakfast was of such massive excess it could have fed the entire population of Mbabane for a month. Mswati had reserved the presidential suite which encompassed the 16th & 17th floors, and makes most Houghton mansions look like a mud hut, at a bargain price of just over forty thousand rand a day. At a discounted price for the other rooms, his entourage would have set back his benefactors about two hundred thousand........not a bad kick-off to combat poverty on the Dark Continent.

In Mswati's defense, we do concede his bill was a pittance compared to the R18million it costs to feed the South African parliament for the year, with its menu of various gourmande dishes that include such expensive/&/or scarce delights as lobster, crayfish, Tiger prawns, various endangered species of ocean fish & abalone, and not to mention enough Nguni cattle & the odd elephant from Dzanga-Ndoki National Park to feed Bangladesh.

Tucking in at the taxpayers expense

Mind you, King Mswati's weekend of indulgence pales into insignificance when compared with SA Communications Minister, Dina 'Hiz Ma Companion' mPull's recent jaunt. She puts a new twist on communications with her R700,000 roundtrip holiday to Monterrey, Mexico, via New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and just about every state capital in the US, and through Mogadishu to look up relatives, all at tax payers' expense with one of her boyfriends at the time whom she conveniently labelled as an official 'companion', as required in the ministerial handbook to describe family, spouses or long-term romantic partners (in mPull's case a three month fling) who may have expenses covered by the state on foreign trips. And all for some World Summit Award Winners Gala in Mexico, whatever the hell that is all about. That her boyfriend or 'companion' for the trip was married with three children seems to have escaped her. And the fact that mPull's 'companion's' company, Kommando Freeloaders, was awarded the contract & six day managerial fee of R6 million 'without tender' for the inaugural ICT Indaba (otherwise known as pissup & feast for black government officials ) in Cape Town seems pretty straight-forward as well. With her boyfriend's contract secured for the Indaba, mPull then negotiated donations of R27.5 million from all of Telkom, MTN & Vodacom for the six day Indaba & another extra R10 million from her own governmental department in case they ran out of Bollinger! R15 million of the telecomms companies' donations  ended up mysteriously diverted to ABR Consulting, a company subcontracted by her erstwhile 'companion'. 'He worked hard for 'eet'', she said!

At an internal parliamentary committee disciplinary hearing, both mPull & said 'companion', Mngqibisa, denied they were romantic partners (I think mPull is in deep water here over the Monterrey trip at least) & stated they were 'comrades'. Putin promptly sent them a telex congratulating them wholeheartedly on their status & inviting them as honorary members of his Disunited Party of Russia. The pair are due to fly out on a specially chartered SAA 747 for next week's inauguration gala, Comrades 'In Flagrante Delicti', to be held in St Petersburg, all at SA taxpayers' expense of course.