Jacob Zuma’s new party claims it is a “liberation movement led by the people”. Mmusi Maimane’s new party insists it is “serving the people, led by the people”. Geez. As if the people didn’t have enough on their plates right now.
Of course, they’re probably not the same people. After all, Zuma and Maimane are very different politicians offering very different things. The one is a charming traditionalist remembered by some as a disastrous leader who wrecked his party and therefore took SA backwards. The other is Jacob Zuma.
Not that the DA faithful had time to remember old grudges over the weekend, as they woke up on Saturday morning to discover that the party’s X account had briefly been hijacked by unknown fifth columnists.
Granted, the wreckers managed to post only one tweet before, I assume, they were tackled and wrestled to the ground by the former front row of the Michaelhouse 1st XV, but the damage had been done.
Flagrantly, explosively, and with no regard for the inevitable destruction it would cause, they had quoted John Steenhuisen verbatim.
In theory, I see what Steenhuisen was trying to do. In theory, calling out Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi for his amaPanyaza — the 6,000-strong force of so-called crime prevention wardens the premier has rushed through a dodgy training programme and onto the streets — was a pretty solid bit of point-scoring.
He even started well, asking: “What did Panyaza Lesufi do?” But then theory turned into horrible, ham-fisted practice. “He took your tax money to buy ill-fitting Pep Stores uniforms for untrained cadres,” proclaimed Steenhuisen, before asking: “What kind of person pulls a drunkard out of a shebeen, gives him a uniform and a weapon and then unleashes them on a community?”
It goes without saying that Lesufi’s scheme is opportunistic, cynical and, since the so-called crime prevention wardens have no legal policing powers, politically fraudulent. It is also public knowledge that some of Lesufi’s kitskonstabels have been accused of assault and that they have managed to crash 22 of the 200 BMWs we bought for them. It’s even possible that there are a few alcoholics among their ranks, and that some of them might be ANC cadres.
But for Steenhuisen to speak with such sweeping and generalised contempt about a group made up overwhelmingly of young South Africans desperate to be employed; to dismiss every one of those exploited, abandoned compatriots as drunks pulled out of a shebeen; to deride clothes from a shop millions of South Africans are too poor to buy from — well, I struggle to imagine a more effective way for the DA to remind the country that it has abandoned its quest to be a national government or even a nationally relevant party.
Yes, it wasn’t a good weekend for the DA. But at least the party in the Western Cape can take some consolation from the strong endorsement its government and economy got recently from the family of ANC stalwart and vice-president Paul Mashatile. According to press reports, Mashatile’s son-in-law has bought a R28m mansion in Constantia, which he explained the veep will be welcome to use whenever living in a non-ANC-controlled province gets too much.
This palace, the press reported, contains “7.5 bathrooms”. I’m not sure what a half-bathroom looks like, but perhaps as Mashatile rushes from toilet to toilet, overwhelmed by choice, he will glimpse it, nestled in a corner of the guest wing, and it will cause him to pause and remember all those South Africans he swore to serve who only have four bathrooms in their house or, in some desperate cases, don’t even have a second house.
Perhaps, as he stares with morbid fascination at a bathroom that contains only a toilet, a bidet, a sink and a heated towel rail, he will find his determination renewed to drag his people out of poverty, starting with estate agents.
But back to these parties being run by “the people” rather than by the likes of Steenhuisen or Mashatile. I wish Maimane well. I think it’s brave, what he’s doing, and not just because it takes some serious positivity to call your party Bosa (Build One SA) just two years after Bosasa was enshrined in the Zondo state capture report as a synonym for filthy governance.
I also think it takes real conviction to know that the left thinks you’re a useful idiot for neoliberals, and the right thinks you’re an unelectable wrecking ball, and to put your name on the ballot anyway.
Of course, speaking of real convictions brings me finally to Zuma, and here too I have to say that I think he’s being surprisingly honest about what he stands for. You can scoff, but I put it to you that his MK Party is, in fact, a liberation movement run by the people; a movement dedicated to liberating him from prosecution and financial hardship, run by the only people he would reasonably consider “the people” — his family, his friends and anyone still foolish enough to lend him money.
Yes, some of us are being led by the people. Some of us are being led by the nose. Me, I just want to be led by a leader. But until then, I’ll settle for 7.5 bathrooms.
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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