A bad week for Panyaza Lesufi
The Gauteng premier’s grandiose crime-fighting schemes seem doomed to failure in a province which can’t even keep the highway lights on
A good week for Pretty Yende
South African operatic soprano Pretty Yende, who has sung in leading roles in venues ranging from La Scala in Milan to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, is one of three soloists who will perform at King Charles’s coronation on May 6. She was selected along with bass-baritone Bryn Terfel and baritone Roderick Williams. Twelve new works by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Patrick Doyle have been commissioned for the service at Westminster Abbey. Musical talent from across the UK and the Commonwealth was considered in the selection of Yende and others. Buckingham Palace said the king personally chose the performers.
A bad week for Panyaza Lesufi
We really shouldn’t have expected much from Panyaza Lesufi’s maiden state of the province address as Gauteng premier. After all, this is the man whose department lavished R431m on a few mops and a bottle of Handy Andy to “decontaminate” schools of the Covid scourge in the great pandemic feeding frenzy of 2020. The same man who thought it would be a good idea to give rapper AKA a state funeral; the performative populist who passes up no opportunity for some choreographed outrage — ideally in front of a TV crew. Now Lesufi has pitched a multibillion-rand crime-fighting plan (source of money — undetermined) to launch a fleet of helicopters into the skies, arm residents with e-panic buttons and fill the air with drones. This in the crumbling province where keeping the grass at bay and the lights working on the highways appear feats too difficult to accomplish. Good luck, Gautengers, you’re going to need it.