Well, he is a male politician in South Africa so isn’t it par for the course?

Over the weekend the big story was Cyril and his alleged infidelities – HERE – although he claimed the allegations were part of a larger smear campaign to discredit his presidential aspirations.

Who knows what to believe, although we know that male South African politicians have long since struggled to keep it in their pants.

Check HERE for six feeble excuses from some of our local philanderers.

Maybe we have become desensitised, but it appears South Africans aren’t all that bothered about Cyril’s private life. Check this out on Business Day:

Yes, Ramaphosa is a presidential contender. But it turns out he wasn’t on the sex tape. And it seems he had already spoken with his wife about the affair and they had moved on.

And the Sunday newspaper that broke the story? Well, it has fallen on hard times of late and now seems to be less of a newspaper than another peddler of stories of the Bell Pottinger ilk…

Despite Ramaphosa’s best efforts to stay in the headlines — a court interdict, an interview with the Sunday Times, a long public statement and a speech on the matter — readers had lost interest by Monday morning.

A brief look at our history and…

South Africans, it seems, are not particularly interested in the private lives of their leaders. They proved this when they elected President Jacob Zuma after he had sex with … let’s just say a bunch of folk.

And some of those folk didn’t even consent. Allegedly.

But what about the bottom line, and whether or not the allegations will affect Cyril’s business interests? From another Business Day article:

During the auction on Saturday at Zebula Golf Estate near the town of Bela Bela, two hours’ drive north of Johannesburg, at least five helicopters and nine small planes were parked on the runway.

Ramaphosa’s six-member auction consortium, Stud Game Breeders, sold livestock ranging from Ramaphosa’s Ankole cattle to buffaloes and a rhino, for almost R116m in total at a live auction.

Ramaphosa sold animals worth R15m from his nearby Phala Phala game farm and a cattle operation.

Doesn’t seem like a bad weekend’s work to me.

News24 might have done away with their comments section, freeing up hours of time for sad and hateful people to roam the streets (or have they migrated to another website to spew their garbage?), but they do still allow user generated posts in the MyNews24 section.

Here’s what user Tendani Siala had to say:

Listening to people’s comments regarding this story and reading comments on social media I can safely say this smear campaign has been a total waste of time and state resources. The vast majority of people see this story for what it is – a smear campaign against Ramaphosa by his political opponents, the Zuptas and their lackeys…

Ramaphosa’s camp must now take maximum advantage of this failed dirty campaign which seems to have backfired very badly. For as long as people see Gupta controlled characters like Kebby and discredited propaganda media like The New Age and the mickey mouse ANN7 carrying on with the story the more people will be convinced that indeed this is a smear campaign. This presents a great opportunity for CR to demonstrate his leadership mettle by showing that he can stand firm and unshaken in the face of all forms of dirt thrown at him. At the risk of sounding ridiculous I think this kind of dirty tricks is what the CR17 campaign has been missing all along. All of a sudden, in a matter of days, CR’s political stock has risen exponentially. CR17’s battle song is now all over the social media.

Personally I would prefer a president who remained faithful (and didn’t play a major role in the deaths of 34 people striking at Marikana), but given the current moral vacuum that exists amongst the presidential hopefuls I guess you take what you can get.

If you’re up against a Zuma, you’ve got the moral high ground.

[sources:buslive&buslive&mynews24]