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WEDNESDAY 5 JUNE 2013 WWW.EXPRESSNEWS.CO.ZA
‘Koning’ of the Kalahari
Lucas premier of note } Boipelo Mere YOU will think of no other than George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984 when you hear Sylvia Lucas crowning herself die koning van die Kalahari. It is Orwell’s discouragement of double-speak that probably made Lucas call herself koning rather than koningin. She is, after all, the premier of the Northern Cape. She is responsible for more than one million inhabitants of this sparsely populated province. Throughout her inaugural speech and her budget speech earlier, one could not miss her well-known antics as she dealt with opposition parties, throwing her sarcasm and sense of humour around. She sent the whole gallery and legislature into raptures when she said in Afrikaans: “Ek praat Afrikaans, want ek het mos met die skip gekom”. She was referring to her as being the offspring of both whites and Bushmen. Lucas was formerly an MEC
for Environment and Nature Conservation and she is a deputy chairperson of the ANC Women’s League in the province. She is better known as the worst howler and noise maker in the legislature, so much so that one could have mistaken her for an empty tin, only to learn when in serious talk and on a one-onone basis that she is indeed a tigress of note. To illustrate the above, in contrast to the rapture that filled the gallery and the chamber, there was an eerie silence when she gave the opposition parties, particularly Cope, a dressing down pointing to the gallery where Karel Boshoff, president of the Orania-beweging, sat, saying she missed him and his party’s Freedom Front Plus constructive criticism and opposition. However, in the face of it all, this koning van die Kalahari looks like a workaholic and somebody who can take the province somewhere.
She looks like a workaholic and somebody who can take the province somewhere
KAREL BOSHOFF congratulated the Northern Cape premier, Syl via Lucas, on behalf of Orania and handed her a gift. Photo: Boipelo Mere
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