It’s pay back the money (again) as Malema moves to seize Zuma’s firepool

Thursday.

It’s reassuring to know that our head of state, Cyril Ramaphosa, is entirely focused on the job of running the country.

His predecessor, Jacob Zuma, was the opposite.

uBaba was the ultimate side hustler, a man so on the make that he only had time to reshuffle his cabinet at midnight, once the day’s takings had been counted and tomorrow’s raid on the fiscus lined up.

Flights were delayed, official openings postponed and engagements abandoned, all because numero uno was busy with his own business — and that of his friends — rather than focusing on his day job until knocking off time came around.

With Nxamalala, it was all about the Benjamins, with governmental business and the other boring stuff coming a very distant second to the securing of the bag.

Twenty four seven, three sixty five.

Cupcake is a different type of president.

It’s not just the inability to sing, the wooden dance moves and the willingness to abide — most of the time at least — by the Constitution of our fair Republic.

The current head of state does have a side hustle, just like the man who came before him.

A game farm is, after all, a game farm, whether you’re the president or anybody else — but Ramaphosa appears to be in it for the love and not the money.

Ramaphosa was quite happy to leave $580  000 — that’s R8.7  million to you and me — in the sofa at his Phala Phala farm, while he trundled off to Addis Ababa for some African Union business.

Anyone else would have banked it, with R2  200 a day to be earned, but our selfless leader appears to have no interest in compound interest and let it stay where it was, keeping his eye instead on the business of the state.

Granted, he doesn’t have to pay his own electricity bill, but that’s still some level of dedication to the day job on the part of the president, who didn’t even take time to do an ATM deposit when he got back from Ethiopia.

Duty before bank balance, good governance over greed and all that.

We are well and truly led.

Unless of course, the money wasn’t bankable, and the president was forced by its illegality to leave it where it was.

The president and his legal team have been denying this since Arthur Fraser first laid charges against him in June 2022 and have managed to convince the Reserve Bank, the Revenue Service, the National Prosecuting Authority, the public protector — and parliament — that the money came from a Christmas cattle sale.

They were still denying it in the constitutional court this week during the hearing of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) attempt to have the failed process to impeach the president reopened.

The hearing might be an attempt by the EFF to get the result they could not secure in either parliament or the high court by other means, but that still doesn’t make Ramaphosa’s story about the money any less bizarre than it was in 2022.

The president must have been sitting on the Phala Phala sofa, giggling, over the goings-on on the concourt steps outside the hearing, where Malema declared war on Zuma and his party — live and direct.

It’s not just the diversion from the embarrassing questions being asked inside the courtroom that would have had the president in stitches.

The heady days in the wake of the 29 May elections and in the initial sittings of the seventh parliament, when the EFF and the uMkhonto weSizwe party were still singing from the same “unity” hymnbook — and the self-proclaimed progressive caucus — appear to be a thing of the past.

Zuma has taken everything he can from the ANC for now — the name of its military wing, its colours, KwaZulu-Natal and its parliamentary majority nationally — and has turned his attention to the EFF ahead of local government elections in 2026.

Juju — rightfully — has gone ballistic over the poaching expedition that netted Floyd Shivambu, Dali Mpofu, Busisiwe Mkhwebane and other members of the EFF top brass, weeks before he stands for his third term as EFF leader.

Zuma has taken Malema for pretty much everything except his seats in parliament and the legislatures and councils around the country, which he’s eyeing — hungrily — for 2026 and beyond.

It’s eye-for-an-eye time and Malema has instructed his lawyers to attach Zuma’s firepool, MaKhumalo’s chicken coop and Floyd’s new office in the former first family’s homestead over the legal costs the old man has owed the EFF since then.

It’s “Pay Back the Money” — all over again.