“When the final result is expected to be a compromise”, wrote John Maynard Keynes, “it is often prudent to start from an extreme position”. Which will be upsetting news to Floyd Shivambu, who genuinely thought he had a shot at being finance minister.
Of course, when Julius Malema staked out his extreme position back in April, saying he would consider working with the ANC if the EFF got the position of speaker and Shivambu got the PIN code to the granddaddy of all VBS banks, his party was still the third-largest in the country and the vanguard of the revolution.
Today it is the outraged also-ran in an ill-fitting tuxedo, storming to the bar and muttering “the nerve of the bounder!” as Jacob Zuma waltzes his date away across the room. There will be the familiar consolations of the revolutionary life, like money and champagne, but Malema — like Shivambu — is a reduced figure.
Still, there is a certain sense in both of Malema’s demands. Putting Shivambu in charge of the SA economy would instantly and drastically reduce inequality — we’d all be equally poor — while even the party’s fiercest critics would have to admit the EFF was born to be the speaker of parliament; a tiny minority yelling at the entire legislature and threatening it with a toy hammer if it didn’t shut up.
To be fair, it’s not a much more extreme proposition than Gayton McKenzie and the PA demanding the home affairs portfolio so they can start their purge of foreigners and, I imagine, people who have been to both Beaufort West and Dubai and noticed that the former doesn’t yet look exactly like the latter and might start wondering if McKenzie was telling an absurd lie when he promised to make them indistinguishable.
What McKenzie doesn’t realise, of course, is that far from allowing him to live out his fantasies of hunting down immigrants and marching them onto buses, taking over home affairs would mean spending five years, dull of eye and slack of jaw, waiting for the System to come back online; and if you haven’t suppressed your memories of your last visit to home affairs you’ll know the System passeth all understanding. As the ancient proverb tells us: humans plan, home affairs laughs.
Beyond the EFF and the PA though, no other parties are showing their hands by publicly announcing their wish lists, either because they are being strategic or, in the case of Zuma’s MK, the portfolios they want don’t exist yet, such as the ministry of grateful genuflection during grain tithes, or the ministry of divinely ordained vengeance.
Admittedly, the silence from inside the negotiating chamber is getting a little loud. Still, I remain optimistic that good decisions will be taken in good faith, and that somehow the right people will find their way to the right posts. Certainly, some of them seem like matches made in political heaven.
Consider, for example, the ministry in the presidency. Nobody knows what it is, or what it does, but it’s almost certainly there, pretty much all the time, and since this is also a fairly accurate description of the IFP, I can’t help wondering if it might be the perfect job for Velenkosini Hlabisa, who as the party’s leader not only has a proven track record of existing but probably has more support in the presidency right now than Cyril Ramaphosa.
Likewise, the education portfolio has some obvious contenders, not least the EFF’s Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, who with a PhD from Wits understands the true value of education in SA — namely that if you study very hard and dedicate yourself to lifelong learning you might one day get to sing backup for the charismatic charlatans in the pointy shoes in the front row.
Still, continuity is important for such a vital portfolio, so perhaps it’s best to keep it with the ANC. After all, they’ve recently learnt that a passing grade is 50%, not 30%, so perhaps they’re finally in a position to test children accordingly.
As for health, well that should obviously go to the DA, which like a depressed proctologist continues to send reminders to people who avoid it at all costs before biting the bullet and making an appointment every five years.
Transportation is trickier. On the one hand Malema seems a good candidate, what with his skill at filling buses, but perhaps Patricia de Lille is better: in 2019 she moved almost 70,000 people into her GOOD party, and this year she moved almost 40,000 of those people out of it again, all with a minimum of fuss.
Certainly, her former portfolio should now be filled by Herman Mashaba of ActionSA, who, like the ideal minister of public works has built a more than solid foundation without anyone except his staff paying much attention.
Finance is the ultimate prize though, and here I wish we could go with the party that achieved the most on May 29 with the least amount of money, whichever party that may be.
This can’t happen, of course. Big money is soothed by tradition and heft, not resourcefulness and thrift. I suppose even suggesting such a thing would qualify as one of Keynes’ extreme positions.
But still, wouldn’t it be grand, just for a moment, to imagine a government that was as careful with our money as we are?
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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