HOGARTH | Maybe Cat meant coking coal

Share current article via EmailShare current article via FacebookShare current article via TwitterShare current article via LinkedInSunday Times HogarthEnter fullscreen mode displaying this image.ExpandAlleged cartel boss Vusimusi “Cat” Matlala testifies before the Madlanga Commission in Pretoria on November 10 2026. Picture: Freddy Mavunda/Business Day At the risk of being accused of kicking a dog when it is down, Hogarth wants to remind everyone that this republic of ours does have a history of inventing fake minerals.

In 2019, while on an official trip to Australia, minerals minister Gwede Mantashe told global investors of Hazenile — a battery-storage mineral that had been discovered in Mzansi and was about to generate a new energy revolution for the world. It soon turned out that the “mineral” was a hoax and had been invented by someone as part of an April Fools’ Day joke earlier that year. True story.

Hence it didn’t come as a surprise to Hogarth when Vusimusi “Cat” Matlala insisted at the Madlanga commission that the white “bricks” he discussed with an associate on WhatsApp were a mineral or mining product whose name he just couldn’t remember.

Perhaps he needs to rewatch Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Red Heat, especially that part where the Soviet Union soldier he plays catches someone smuggling drugs and cries: “Cocainum!”.

Hogarth, however, does find it curious that Cat’s white bricks came from a man whose first name is Smanga — which, when loosely translated into English, means miracle. Apt?

Remember that other time Cat told the parliamentary ad hoc committee investigating the same issues as the Madlanga commission that he had delivered wads of cash to a former cabinet minister using a black Woolies bag? Soon thereafter the retailer temporarily introduced grey and near-transparent bags as replacements for the black one, even though it swore that had nothing to do with Cat’s claim.

A few months later, the whole thing had died down and the black bags were back in vogue.

At the hearings this week, however, a video showed the “white bricks” being weighed next to an empty black Woolies bag. Are shoppers in for a different colour bag this festive season?

Those who follow politics closely would agree that the Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg is an alternative seat of power for the ANC and related political parties, trade unions and even government departments. So, it was no surprise that when the country’s largest political party needed to have a postmortem of its poor showing at the polls, it chose Birchwood as the venue for what some dubbed “an after-tears” gathering.

Gathered at the same hotel, albeit in a different meeting hall, were leaders of the SACP, the MK Party, the EFF and several other parties that constitute what has become known as “the conference of the left”.

One of Hogarth’s associates who was at Birchwood on the day says there were so many familiar faces at that gathering — people he had known as ANC members over the years before they broke away and contested elections under new names — that he thought it should have been called “the conference of those who left”.

Gauteng ANC leader and premier Panyaza Lesufi fashions himself as a great student of Harry Gwala. But Hogarth wonders sometimes if he is not a secret admirer of one JG Zuma. That is not to question his loyalties but to remark on his leadership style. Remember how, out of the blue in 2002, the Nkandla Crooner issued a statement distancing himself from claims — that had been made by no-one — that he wanted to replace ANC president Thabo Mbeki as party leader?

Well, Lesufi this week took to social media to distance himself from a digital poster punting him as the next ANC president. The fishy part of the whole saga was that, until he posted it on his socials, no-one had actually seen the campaign banner.

The US midterm elections are finally over, with almost all of the states having now declared their results. It was an entertaining campaign season with a lot of colourful characters, but perhaps not many of them as colourful as the Democratic Party’s chair in Alaska, Eric Croft, who, while explaining to a reporter why it was taking so long to announce the results in the state, said:

“We are still counting up here. We take a kind of different approach. We treat this process more like sex, finishing first and early is not the main goal. We prefer to take it slow, kind of do it right and hope that at the end everybody involved is satisfied.”

The Democrats won the Alaska governor’s race and at the time of going to press were closing in on the Senate seat. A happy ending?

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