You know we’re properly through the looking glass when Mzwanele Manyi inviting political parties, NGOs and religious organisations to a “welcome prayer” for Jacob Zuma next month isn’t the most absurd thing on the political agenda.
Not that the tweet by the Jacob Zuma Foundation wasn’t pretty bonkers, including a reference to “H.E Prez Zuma”, that zed adding the touch of class we’ve come to expect from everything the Zuma faction touches.
But Team Zuma just couldn’t compete with the astonishing drivel being served up by Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday evening, as he sat in an armchair that was a hate crime against good taste and did his absolute best to drive voters away from the ANC and investors away from SA.
Some of it was simply self-parody, such as the moment Ramaphosa admitted he didn’t know how much electricity costs.
The most basic first step towards ending corruption is to demonise it and to publicly shun those who have perpetrated it or enabled it.
His defence of the ANC’s essentially non-existent election campaign was also magic, as he explained that the party was, in fact, campaigning but that it was a “silent campaign”, which I suppose makes sense when you’ve never heard the pleas of your voters and offer largely invisible services.
At other times, however, he blundered into accidental, unconscious honesty, with far more depressing results.
Explaining that it would take time to reform the ANC, he dusted off the old maritime metaphor of trying to turn a big ship around. Fair enough. He even used the name of a famous ship. Again, full marks for evocative language.
But instead of suggesting that turning the ANC around will be like turning the Queen Mary, or the QE2, or an aircraft carrier, or even that damned one that got stuck in the Suez Canal, Ramaphosa named — and I swear I’m not making this up — the Titanic.
There was also his entirely true and supremely chilling observation that many voters feel there is nowhere they can go besides the ANC.
Of course, what Ramaphosa meant was that many voters don’t want to leave the ANC. He thought he was talking about loyalty and history. What he was really describing, however, was a nightmare in which millions of voters find themselves trapped between the devil they know far too well and the unknown devils they’ve been told lurk outside in the dark.
All in all it was a hot mess, revealing pretty much nothing about the ANC’s plans for winning the election or governing after that.
Among all the obfuscation and buck-passing, however, one comment stood out as supremely illuminating, saying more in a minute than Ramaphosa managed over the course of his interminable briefing.
Turning his attention to the SIU’s report into the Digital Vibes looting scandal, Ramaphosa asked the country to remember that Zweli Mkhize might have done wrong but he’d also served “the people” well.
He didn’t say which people, perhaps because they’re already named in the SIU’s report. But it was an extraordinary reminder of how we got into this mess, and how unlikely the ANC is to get us out.
I don’t expect Ramaphosa to denounce or reject Mkhize in private. If he wants to go to Mkhize’s house with a bouquet of flowers and a “Sorry you got caught” card, then all power to him.
But the most basic first step towards ending corruption is to demonise it and to publicly shun those who have perpetrated it or enabled it.
If Ramaphosa were even half a leader, he would have understood the importance of drawing a line between the future we want and the actions of people like Mkhize; making it clear, however diplomatically, that the paymaster of Digital Vibes is an outcast and pariah; perhaps even rolling out some solid clichés about how Mkhize resigned because he understands that he let the country down and that even a hint of corruption has no place in SA.
But Ramaphosa isn’t even half a leader, and so instead he told us that Mkhize used to be good at his job, as if we didn’t know; as if that wasn’t the whole reason it was so upsetting and depressing when he was revealed to have betrayed us.
Still, at least Ramaphosa didn’t mention the Titanic again.
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