NEWS & ANALYSIS

Who's advising Malema?

Dinga Nkhwashu says the ANCYL president is lurching from one PR disaster to another

On Tuesday a press conference was called by the ANC Youth League allegedly at the behest of TUMI MOKWENA INC., the legal representatives of our (I am a proud member of the ANC Youth League) President to "put to rest the issues raised". It was quite an occasion from the press snippets that I have seen and the pride and contentment on Floyd Shivambu was clear as day light. Unfortunately the press conference was a damp squib,

You see I am a proud member of the ANC and its youth league and I have been watching what has effectively been a public relations disaster engulfing our President. His advisors (not legal) have moved from one blunder to another and in the process have helped tear my President's reputation to shreds without even the assistance of the so called right wing journalists and media houses.

Mr. Malema's reputation is not and was not destroyed by you, the reactionary and white capitalist media, as you are called. My personal view is that he is surrounded by a bunch of clueless cronies who have perfected the art of public relations disasters. In fact they have set a new standard which I doubt will be surpassed anytime soon,

Mr. Malema might learn a thing or two from my experience growing up. You see when I was young you only went to school at the age of 7. Unfortunately I happened to be too smart and restless to wait my turn and so ended up attending school at 6. But the point here is that it later turned out that I excelled at school and because of my "intelligence" I did not want to socialize or spend time with people of my age when I was growing up. In fact I refused to take advice from them because they either, at best, knew what I knew or even less,

The moral of the story: do not surround yourself with people who see you as some hero or demigod and who do not know anything that you don't already know. Ask Mbeki. He surrounded himself with characters who saw him as the ultimate epitome of knowledge and not only did he get walloped in Polokwane, but one of his yes man earned himself the name of COMICAL ALI, the erstwhile Saddam regime minister who was hanged recently in Iraq.

You see a leader must surround himself with objective and clued-up advisors who will advise him correctly and not tell him to take them on even if he is on shaky ground. I am no PR expert but I know that whoever advised the President of the ANCYL to grant press interviews; insult the media; make contradictory denials; put his foot in his mouth left, right, west, east, north, south; and make other unimaginable twists and turns in trying to pluck himself out of the mess he finds himself in, must be fired immediately and be banished from within 100 metres of the President for at least 4 years.

I presume it is the same amateur who came up with the "brilliant" idea that the lawyer must now enter the fray and "clear" the matter and "put to rest the issues raised". In fact the primary focus of my article is the statement by the lawyer "clarifying" the issues. I must confess that when I heard him speak I was seized with two minds:-

1. Either he is joking or,

2. Worse he thinks the members of the public and the press are extreme lunatics,

But I must hasten to say my conclusion as to which one of the two is a secret that I am willing to take with me to the grave. In this article I am going to cast aside (for a moment and where needs be) my hat as a member of the ANC Youth League and don the one as a commercial lawyer who has done countless registrations and deregistrations of companies, directors and members. And yes there is a huge difference between a director and a member but do not worry I will reserve the legal and technical jargon for the appropriate fora,

Be that as it may I think the starting point is to make reference to the press statement by my Learned Colleague (we lawyers have our own language too) him being Mr. Mokoena, the lawyer of the Youth League President. I will confine myself to specific excerpts from the statement:

1. DE-REGISTRATION FROM VARIOUS COMPANIES so goes one heading and it goes on to say a lot of things but here is the clincher: " the official documents and website of CIPRO reflect the status of the said companies " de-registration in process". Well I took the liberty to do a search of the companies AND close corporations. Before I actually deal with the information that I found I am inclined to indicate the different between a company and or close corporation being deregistered and resignation as a member of a close corporation or director of a company. These two are worlds apart and if the document given to e.tv is purported to be proof that Mr. Malema resigned or is in the process of resigning, well, how does one put it diplomatically, there has been some hoodwinking going on,

All that the document confirms is this: the close corporation 101 JUNJUS TRADING CC of which my President remains a sole ACTIVE member (and not director) is being deregistered by CIPRO (not my President or his attorney) because it has failed to comply with the laws of the country and regulations issued by CIPRO under those laws. These require all registered close corporations and companies to lodge prescribed documents called annual returns. If anyone should take credit for this process it is CIPRO,

The documents further confirms that SGL ENGINEERING PROJECTS (PTY) LTD (for the uninitiated PTY LTD means Proprietary Limited and indicates that the company is registered as a private company) REGISTRATION NUMBER 2009/009206/07 (the 2009 depicts the year of registration) is in fact in business and my President (I am a youth league member remember) is still an active member. Here is another interesting fact: SGL ENGINEERING was a close corporation (CC) with registration number 2008/114232/23 (remember what I said about the year and what it means?) that was subsequently converted to SGL ENGINEERING PROJECTS (PTY) LTD.

Well you already knew that except: you did not know that when SGL ENGINEERING PROJECTS was still a close corporation the ONLY member was one LESIBA CUTHBERT GWANGWA according to the CIPRO records in my possession. Yes, no Sello Julius Malema until it became a company.

According to the records EVER ROARING INVESTMENT (PTY) LTD still has my President as a director even today.

Back to the press statement: it appears from the press statement that there has been what I call a colossal failure of common sense by everybody involved including the press that attended the briefing or rather that received the document purporting to prove the "deregistrations" (I mean resignation) of Mr. Malema from the close corporations and companies,

Equally as I indicated elsewhere above it also appears there has been a colossal failure of common sense from the "advisors" of my President in dealing with this issue. It is not for me to make your mind up for you dear reader on who is fooling who on this one. In conclusion and before you start to marvel at my supreme intelligence in coining such a phrase, I borrowed the phrase A COLOSSAL FAILURE OF COMMON SENSE from one Larry MacDonald, former employee of the now collapsed LEHMAN BROTHERS, an American behemoth that everybody thought was invincible until it crumbled and disappeared. No pun or ironies intended.

Dinga Nkhwashu is a practising commercial attorney and consultant in Limpopo province

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