The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) notes with no surprise the reports that Minister Gayton McKenzie’s former chief of staff, Bakang Lethoko, is now the CEO of Ticketpro, the ticketing vendor for Cricket South Africa and the South African Football Association. Ticketpro was sold to a consortium that includes Patriotic Alliance (PA) members and a person McKenzie appointed to the boards of the National Film and Video Foundation and the National Arts Council.
This has occurred just before South Africa hosts the 2027 Men’s Cricket World Cup, with hundreds of millions of Rands in ticket sales at stake. The same people who sit around the Minister now sit at the centre of a company positioned to profit from the sports bodies his department oversees.
The public is expected to believe in coincidence when a minister’s former chief of staff, his board appointee and his party’s own members land a multimillion-rand business on the eve of the biggest sporting event in the country’s recent history. The purchase price and the source of the funds are being kept secret, and the Cricket World Cup organisers have not explained how ticketing was awarded. A minister who cares about clean governance would have demanded full disclosure the moment this was raised. Instead, his office asked whether PA members should “starve”, as if the question were about hunger and not about who is positioned to profit from public sport.
This has become a pattern further reports show that at least 19 people linked to the PA have been appointed to boards and directorates of public entities under McKenzie’s department, and the Public Protector has even been approached to investigate whether he breached the Executive Ethics Code.
The Auditor-General has additionally reported poor record-keeping and confirmed fraud in some cases at his department, and recently the Minister skipped the Parliamentary briefing on those findings to attend a Cricket World Cup schedule launch. A minister who ducks accountability to Parliament while his department’s books are in disorder has told South Africans exactly how seriously he takes oversight.
Long before Ticketpro, there was the R3 million gala dinner in Sandton, hosted in 2022 while McKenzie was executive mayor of the Central Karoo District Municipality and billed as a fundraiser for service delivery in one of the poorest regions of the country. Donations for the Karoo projects were deposited into an account linked to McKenzie and the PA and the Western Cape High Court ordered McKenzie to hand over information to forensic investigators.
He has fought that order through the High Court, the Supreme Court of Appeal, and finally the Constitutional Court, losing at every level. Having exhausted those appeals in April, he has now gone back to court to try to have the investigation terminated, and the probe remains unfinished more than three years after the dinner.
The EFF warned the people of South Africa about voting for criminals, and we are not surprised that they behave like criminals once in office. McKenzie has built a political brand on his past as a convicted bank robber and gang leader, selling it as proof that he understands the streets and will fight corruption. What it actually told us was that this is a man who sees the state as an opportunity to further his expertise in theft.
The EFF demands that President Cyril Ramaphosa explain why he continues to keep a minister in Cabinet who is under a forensic investigation he has spent years trying to stop, whose department has received adverse findings from the Auditor-General, and whose associates are now in control of the ticketing company serving the sports bodies his department oversees.
We also demand that the Public Protector fast-track the investigation into the PA-linked appointments, and that the Cricket World Cup organisers and Cricket South Africa publish how Ticketpro was appointed, who bid, and on what criteria. We further demand that the Minister and all PA-linked appointees make a full public disclosure of their interests in Ticketpro and every other entity doing business with the state or state-funded bodies.
The EFF has been criticized for its aggressive tactics in Parliament and public protests.
Mental Prophet
The cab driver feels compelled to flesh the story out, as its just the husband he\’s talking to.
\”yeah I remember that last shore leave in Johannesburg, me and the lads gagging for some action, end up in a dive bar and met this girl, we got a room and she was the the worst fuck I\’ve ever had!\”
The wife says \”what did he say?\”.
Husband \”the cab driver he says he might know you!\”
black walnut
Van is getting married, but he and his fiancee have never done the deed – in fact he\’s never been with any woman before. He\’s getting more and more nervous as the big day approaches, so he confides in his friend. His friend says \’No worries man. I\’ll come by the honeymoon suite before you guys get there, and I\’ll hide behind the curtain, and I\’ll whisper instructions to you.\’
\’You\’d do that for me?\’
\’Sure thing man!\’
So the wedding day arrives, it was a lovely service (so I was told, I wasn\’t there myself) and Van\’s friend sneaks into the honeymoon suite as promised and hides behind the curtain.
Van and his new wife arrive in the room, get settled on the bed, and things are getting steamy.
But Van is still super nervous and his tummy is bubbling, so he murmers to his wife, \’Listen babe, I\’m just gonna go to the bathroom quick. I think it\’s that wors roll from earlier.\’
\’Sure thing babe.\’
So Van goes into the bathroom, and he\’s taking quite a long time. And his wife is starting to feel the nerves herself. And it\’s getting worse. She can\’t hold it in. But she doesn\’t want to go after he\’s gone and totally ruin the mood. So she looks around and finally finds a shoebox. Quickly, she does her business in the shoebox, and she shoves it under the bed just as Van comes back from the loo.
Van gets back on the bed and they go at it again. But after a minute or so Van smells something not so lekker.
\’What\’s that smell?\’
\’Nothing babe,\’ he wife tries to assure him.
\’No man there\’s definitely something not so lekker in this room!\’VSo Van starts looking around the room, in the corners, in the cupboard, and finally he looks under the bed, and sees the shoebox.
He pull it out, and opens it up, and in horror he shouts \’Sies! Daar\’s kak in hierdie doos!\’
And from behind the curtain his friend yells, \’NEE MAN, DRAAI HAAR OM!\”