TOM EATON: A cautious look at a future that ain’t what it used to be

Yogi Berra, the baseballer and accidental wit, is credited with many wonky truths, whether advising us always to “go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t go to yours” or, “if you see a fork in the road, take it”.

But one quote attributed to Berra remains particularly relevant: “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.”

As I bow out until next year though, I can’t quite bring myself to leave you with another look back at the politics of 2024 which, with all due respect to the better ones, sometimes feel like one of those holiday slide-shows people used to inflict on each other, except where the blurry Greek islands are ANC politicians and the slightly off-centre plates of calamari are tender scandals.

This, then, is a cautious look forward, even though — to quote another famous Yogi-ism — the future ain’t what it used to be. In just the last few days, 2025 has lurched in a radically different direction as the Assad regime in Syria has finally gone where all tyrants eventually go: a private jet, and then the guest house of a stronger tyrant.

I would be a fool to try to predict the immediate trajectory of the Middle East, where Iran and Russia are feeling cornered and the US and Israel now have common cause with Syrian rebel leader Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, described as a proponent of “moderate jihad”, which implies the existence of mild jihad, a soupcon of jihad and a jug of jihad sprinkled over a cautiously supportive editorial in a major Western newspaper.

Luckily, we don’t have to worry about any of this going south, because in just over a month Donald Trump will be US president and he told us he would end the Gaza violence within hours and the war in Ukraine within 24 hours, presumably by sending some gifted envoy we haven’t met yet, like his son’s divorce lawyer’s tennis coach. 

Of course, there are forces determined to see Trump fail, such as the Swamp, the imaginary radical US left, economics and physics, and if he somehow fails to secure world peace 2025 could produce a lot of refugees; and where there are refugees, there are populist, nativist, isolationist politics.

Yes, it remains to be seen whether SA’s so-called revolutionary parties use next year to offer solutions to anything other than staying out of jail, but what seems certain in 2025 is that the government of national unity (GNU) is likely to break apart and will almost certainly stay unhappily united.

If Syria plunges into bloodshed again, an increasingly fractured and conservative Europe may well start flirting more unapologetically with the kind of politics that end in fascism. 

Here at home, the stakes might be slightly lower but 2025 is still likely to be a watershed year, quite literally in the case of Joburg, which is shedding water even as we speak, usually out of hydrants, into streets and down drains.

For the rest of the country though, 2025 is the year before the next local government election, a year in which SA’s parties will need to convince us that they can deliver more than Christmas wishlists and Big Man posturing.

Some still haven’t got the memo. Over the weekend, as Jacob Zuma’s MK party raked over some less-than-stellar results in recent by-elections, one-man rent-a-crowed Mzwanele Manyi tweeted a picture of Zuma playing chess, explaining that “chess is a game of thinkers” in which “understanding the moves of your opponent is the main ingredient”.

I know Manyi’s material wellbeing depends on him cooing sweet nothings to Zuma from inside the royal aviary, but it was yet another reminder that to the adherents of radical economic transformation politics is about winning, not serving. What excites Zuma’s followers isn’t the prospect of water in taps; it’s the almost erotic thrill of seeing old, rich men try to trick other old, rich men. 

Yes, it remains to be seen whether SA’s so-called revolutionary parties use next year to offer solutions to anything other than staying out of jail, but what seems certain in 2025 is that the government of national unity (GNU) is likely to break apart and will almost certainly stay unhappily united.

At least that’s what I read in the papers, where genuine frictions and legitimate hard-nosed political brinkmanship are mixed with a performance of strategic grumpiness for the voters, leaving us in this peculiar Schrödinger’s cabinet where, depending on who’s looking when, the GNU is both alive and dead.

Over the weekend John Steenhuisen told the Sunday Times that if Cyril Ramaphosa fired education minister Siviwe Gwarube, it “would signal an end to the GNU”.

Then again, just last year the DA told us officially that it had “no interest in co-governing with the ANC or keeping the ANC in power”, so perhaps when Steenhuisen talks about something signalling the end of the GNU he means one of those signals they give you at the Oscars to show you that it’s time to start thinking about maybe considering wrapping up your speech at some point, if that’s OK with you.

No, Steenhuisen knows if the DA does walk next year it will walk straight into a kind of political irrelevance it hasn’t known for years. Besides, I’m not convinced the ANC wants it to go, especially if the alternative is Zuma and his merry band of wreckers.

But now it’s time to put all of this away for a few weeks and remember what’s really important in our lives. After all, as Yogi Berra told us: if you don’t know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.

See you next year. 

• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.