In a curiously underreported incident, it seems President Cyril Ramaphosa has not only spoken directly to a major Middle Eastern god but has been told that this particular god hates SA and wants to see all of us destroyed.
Admittedly, I wasn’t there so don’t know the precise circumstances of the revelation, or when exactly Ramaphosa came down from the mountaintop clutching his two tablets (an iPad and a Panado), but I do know that at the weekend he told a congregation in eThekwini that it was “God’s will that the ANC governs”.
Of course, this vendetta is nothing new. Jacob Zuma first told us years ago that this god had personally chosen his corrupted version of the ANC to run — and therefore wreck — SA until Jesus returned and fell headlong into a pothole. However, the latest revelation seems to confirm that the grudge is still being borne.
The best we can hope for is the possibility that both Zuma and Ramaphosa were lying, and that neither of them has ever talked to a god, not even a small local one like Tyrone the god of East Rand body shops who can lower your suspension to one micron above the road. But I feel uncomfortable calling either of them a liar, mainly because I try to be a bit original in this column and I don’t want to say what millions of South Africans say every day.
No, I’m afraid that if Ramaphosa isn’t a cynical liar we’ve somehow made an enemy of one of the most ill-tempered gods out there. But it’s not just heavenly powers arrayed against us. Earlier this month Gayton McKenzie of the Patriotic Alliance (PA) told an audience that he’d been approached by the Illuminati not just once but twice, and both times had told the shadowy cabal to go to hell.
What a scene it must have been: the dark and stormy night, angry shouting through the intercom, the Mr Delivery driver giving up and stuffing the two pizzas back in the top box on his bike before going back to Il Luminati and explaining to Mr Vito that Mr McKenzie was in one of his moods again ...
Yes, five weeks away from an election the silliness is getting very silly indeed. But what’s also becoming clear is the extent to which we will believe outlandish claims, whether they be that McKenzie, most famous for promising to turn the Central Karoo into Dubai and then not turning the Central Karoo into Dubai, is now the only politician who isn’t owned by the Illuminati, or that a Middle Eastern god has chosen the ANC to run this country, and is therefore a god that likes it when children drown in pit toilets.
All of us share a vulnerability, something politicians smell and surge towards like a shark to an open wound
This is the moment many readers of this column throw up their hands and cry: how can they believe such things? How can anyone support such obvious charlatans? How can someone vote for Zuma after everything he’s done? But this is also the moment when I would urge caution when it comes to self-righteous outrage and aghast finger-pointing.
To be clear, I’m not advocating the belief, often revealed by the political left, that people can’t be held responsible for any self-destructive actions because the masses are essentially powerless victims of external forces — that is, agency-less husks who need revolutionary committees to tell them how to behave and think correctly.
But I do think any frustration or anger over how “they” vote, whether it be for the ANC or Zuma or any other party, should be tempered with the acknowledgment of two facts. The first is that all of us are “they” to somebody else, with beliefs that are inexplicable or even abhorrent to others. The second is that all of us share a vulnerability, something politicians smell and surge towards like a shark to an open wound: our ancient, human penchant for believing almost anything, no matter how fantastical, if it offers consolation, explanation, the promise of better days or the prospect of seeing our critics humbled.
If that’s the baseline for humanity (and I think it is) then how do we even begin to talk of “rational” or “sensible” responses in this country? Where does reason feature in a place built on and then ruled by violent irrationality, and slowly separated from reality by the ANC’s endless lies and justifications?
How exactly are prospective MK or PA voters supposed to arrive in the calm centre of liberal thought when in the world outside their door police are criminals and gangsters are protectors; when they feel heard and seen by hereditary monarchs and charming rogues but ignored by the constitutional democracy and its free press; when the people tut-tutting loudest about corruption are those who benefited from the moral corruption of colonialism and apartheid?
No, in a chaotic, violent place where actions and consequences have an entirely arbitrary relationship, peculiar beliefs will find fertile soil. For the likes of Zuma and Ramaphosa, and perhaps even McKenzie, the choice is clear: do the thankless, endless work of repair, requiring skill and patience far beyond what is tolerated in their dismal organisations; or pretend they’ve spoken to god or the Illuminati, and let an exhausted, reeling people convince themselves that it might, maybe, possibly be true.
Because God knows, it’s no more absurd than anything else out there.
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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