Are calls for Chuene's head, mere pies in the sky?

Calls for Athletics South Africa's Leornard Cheune to resign after his recently revealed role in the Caster Semenya debacle, strike me as mere calls in the thicket, whose sound will echo and finally fade away into oblivion.


Athletics South Africa have thrown their weight behind their clown prince and have "unanimously" expressed their confidence in him.


His smearing of the organization's name, the country's name and above all, Caster's name seem to be of no concern to these colleagues or dare I say accomplices?


I was impressed by Deputy Sports Minister Gert Oosthuizen's stern stance regarding Chuene as he urged that the man must be asked to step down. Sadly, the rest of the cabinet does not share similar sentiments and they say let him stay.


Not entirely surprising given the culture of public officials defiantly remaining in employment despite being tainted by professionally compromising scandal. There is a lengthy precedence of such cases that good old Leornard can draw strength and inspiration from: Mbeki and Manto regarding their opposition to ARV drugs fiasco, Selebi the top cop who faced criminal charges and did not voluntarily leave office, the Travelgate scandal involving parliamentarian fraud, I could go on and on.


Chuene himself has cried that he is a victim of a hate campaign similar to that of Zuma during the rape trial. He might not be aware that his comparison to JZ is true in more ways than he could have meant when making that utterance.

And so SADC met

So the much awaited SADC summit proved to be much a do about nothing.


I for one did not expect anything more than the usual back patting and empty rhetoric of some of Africa's so called champions of Uhuru. At the most I predicted the official takeover by young Joe Kabila at the helm of SADC to be the highlight of the party.


Unfortunately some most naive people such as my Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, expected a wave of the magical wand by South Africa's JZ to bring about a post Mbeki policy shift. That done, they hoped that same magical wand would be used to rap naughty Bob on the knuckles. These actions would then result in compliance by Zanu PF to the outstanding issues of the woe begotten Global Political Agreement between Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara.


Alas, that was not to be, much to the disappointment of the hopefuls. SADC reminds one of other historically toothless bulldogs, such as its sister SADCC, the OAU,the AU, the Non Aligned Movement and even the League of Nations.


Let us not hold our breath awaiting SADC to betray the blood signed code of brotherhood and heed to the calls for sterner action coming from the 'Western blighters."


Even Ian Khama seems to have toned down, he after all has much to be sorry for, what with a British mother and all.