It was surreal, even by the partisan, histrionic standards of social media. The health minister had just been drawn into an apparent corruption scandal at least twice as large as Sarafina 2. Norma Mngoma, estranged wife of Malusi Gigaba, had gone full Marie Antoinette at the Zondo commission.
But it was the DA that was being pummelled on social media for holding an online rally.
According to the Scorpio investigative team, the state paid R90m to pals of Zweli Mkhize to do, you know, like, stuff, including R3.6m to get him onto the SABC to announce the second wave of Covid-19, that is to appear on the state’s own broadcaster and do the job we pay him to do.
According to my Twitter feed, however, one of the largest problems facing this country was the continued existence of the DA.
Last week Mngoma refuted Gigaba’s claim that he’d given her a debit card with R3,000 on it, explaining that she needed at least R100,000 a month because “there is nothing in my life I can do with R3,000”.
Yet, my feed told me, it was the DA that is excruciatingly unable to read a room.
And on Monday, as the Zondo commission was told how Ace Magashule’s Free State government handed hundreds of millions to the Guptas, certain Twitterers were still trying to recover from the outrage of seeing Afrikaans pop singer Andriette Norman perform at the DA’s rally at the weekend.
Of course, it’s early days and perhaps these Tweeters still want to comment on those ANC fiascos, but first want to get all their facts straight. I myself am not yet sure Mngoma’s comment was an example of our klepto-aristocracy demonstrating dazzling New Money contempt for the poor and middle class.
It’s possible that, being married to an ANC minister, she doesn’t understand how money works and has spent the past few years paying R25,000 for a can of Coke Zero and wondering why cafe owners and waiters are always so euphoric to see her.
Still, watching the DA’s critics climb in on the weekend, denouncing the party as an obstacle to progress in SA while offering little or no comment on the news of the ANC’s latest feeding frenzy, I could understand why Helen Zille and John Steenhuisen keep accusing their critics of double standards.
They’re right, of course. I definitely hold the DA to a different standard than the ANC, because that’s what the DA has asked me to do, over and over again, by endlessly selling itself as the honest sheriff in a town of lowdown varmints. And once you’ve gone that route, I’m afraid you can’t get overly annoyed with the townsfolk if they are scandalised by you spitting in public but simply shrug when the local cattle rustler steals another herd.
To be fair, Zille doesn’t blame all the townsfolk, just a nebulous horde of lefties which, she claims, goads the DA online simply to win the admiration of its comrades. I must admit that I’ve seen some of these myself, and can confirm there is a certain sort of Twitterer for whom hammering the DA is a satisfying, safe rite of passage into early digital adulthood; the online version of hitting puberty, being given a spear, and going off into the forest alone to track, wrestle and kill your first shrew.
Indeed, there were a few of them on Twitter at the weekend, shrew pelts dangling as they rather transparently fretted over the troubling whiteness of singer Norman while carefully ignoring performances by rapper Early G and singer Emo Adams.
The prerecorded rally felt like the long safety video of a low budget airline. Much of it was terribly obvious and on the nose, as political rallies usually are. But those who tried to imply that Norman’s performance was proof that the DA protects white supremacy, were, I’m afraid, not doing their cause any favours.
On the contrary, they gave the reactionary faction of the DA a priceless gift: evidence of fabricated outrage, and therefore permission to ignore valid criticism as the angry rants of Cultural Marxists (or whichever other monster now haunts the fitful sleep of the political right.)
Which is a pity, because if they’d listened, they might have heard from disappointed, disillusioned DA voters asking legitimate questions: about the party’s apparent abandonment of its larger ambitions; its strategic retreat away from centrist, democratic liberalism towards territory now occupied by the FF+; the public haemorrhaging of black talent; its tolerance of Zille’s scorched earth policy on Twitter...
Instead, the party’s most aggressive defenders invoked the Woke Gevaar. And when the official opposition goes down that rabbit hole there is one winner: the new aristocracy, staring uncomprehendingly at R3,000.
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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