I never assume to know what the future holds, but this week things are especially up in the air as a number of South Africans warn that either today or tomorrow all the world’s Christians will be levitated into the clouds to meet a descending Jesus Christ, an event known to believers as the Rapture, and to employers who pay on the 25th as a hell of a relief.
It’s not clear how these dates were established (the Bible is oddly cagey on the specifics) but when people start diarising End Times I usually assume it’s got something to do with the financial vicissitudes of religious entrepreneurs, like short-term loans being called in, or a third wife discovering the existence of a second mistress.
Suffice it to say, both the 23rd and 24th have been named, whether by a certain Pastor Joshua Mhlakela (whose visions made it all the way into the New York Post earlier this month), gospel singer Danie Botha, or someone named Mahlatse Letoka, who seems to have sent an email to thousands of people around the world warning them to stock up on bibles and not allow Elon Musk to implant anything in them. In her defence though, that last bit of advice is pretty solid.
I’m making light, but of course I don’t want the Rapture to happen, partly because of fomo (I watched a prosperity preacher on YouTube explain who’ll be chosen to blast off into the cumulonimbus for that glorious if slightly damp rendezvous, and reader, it ain’t me) but also because I suspect the world would be pretty grim in the days afterwards: just imagine tens of millions of heavily armed US Christian nationalists realising they haven’t been picked and looking for someone to blame.
Still, I don’t begrudge South Africans their desire to go somewhere better, especially now that nobody can afford to go on holiday any more. Besides, it’s part of who we are, this deep strain of relentless optimism and magical thinking. We are a country of gamblers, partly because we like risk but mostly, I think, because we are fantastically good at ignoring the mathematics of probability; at keeping intact our firm belief that jackpots and raptures and other magical solutions to our problems are just around the corner.
Which brings me to Helen Zille, announced as the DA’s mayoral candidate in Johannesburg and whose possible return to the city she was born and grew up in is being sold fairly hard as a low-key second coming. Certainly, many DA supporters on social media seem to be responding with almost religious excitement, insisting that Johannesburg needs a miracle and that Zille is the only person in the country capable of delivering.
In comment after comment, Zille appears not as a canny and seasoned politician but rather an entirely magical being — part fairy godmother, part resurrected Margaret Thatcher, getting ready to wave her blue wand and turn a pumpkin and some mice into a booming metropolis.
But the magical thinking around Zille does seem to be obscuring one nagging bit of reality: the fact that the DA will need to win a clear majority in Johannesburg, without which Zille, the bête noire of almost everyone in every party outside the DA (and, to be fair, a few people inside it) will be dumped out of office by new coalitions and replaced with some soul-dead money spigot faster than you can say “don’t stop the patronage”.
So can the DA get 51% in Johannesburg next year? Miracles do happen. But right now the Rapture seems far more likely.
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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