TOM EATON | Farmgate is not our Watergate, but it is a watershed

When the ANC’s obituary is written, it will surely include the delicious irony of these final, ham-fisted attempts to recall Cyril Ramaphosa and wrench back control of the patronage machine: in the end, the party was so incompetent, it couldn’t even put together a half-decent smear campaign.

At least one essay has described the ongoing showdown between Ramaphosa and the Radical Economic Obliteration faction as “Machiavellian”, which is utterly libellous — to Machiavelli. What we’ve seen so far has been straight out of a Coen brothers comedy, complete with alleged masterminds blowing their loot on diamond teeth. I mean, if the point of the heist was to make sure someone eventually got caught, wouldn’t you at least hire some slightly more plausible perps, say, some former spies rather than a gaggle of tweens who’d won a trolley dash at Toys R Us?

I’ve also read that this is Ramaphosa’s “Watergate” moment and, while I understand the similarities between the history of the US scandal and the current allegations against the president, I’m not entirely convinced by the analogy.

First, Richard Nixon’s resignation was seen as a triumph for transparency and democracy, but if Ramaphosa goes, he will be replaced by a politburo-for-life comprising Jacob Zuma’s children, whoever’s paying their bills at the time, Ace Magashule, and a court of shills and leeches that will make Carl Niehaus and Mzwanele Manyi look like elder statesmen. In other words, we want Nixon to stay, at least for now.

Second, Watergate might have entrenched the disillusionment begun in Vietnam, but it didn’t bring about any fundamental change in US power structures. Nixon, a Republican, succeeded two Democrats, until he was replaced by Republican Gerald Ford who was replaced by Democrat Jimmy Carter, who was trounced by Republican Ronald Reagan, and so on and so on, until the present; an endless parlour game in which American oligarchs pass power back and forth across the aisle, and independents gaze on from obscurity.

The onrushing and inevitable collapse of the ANC, however, is about to topple the monolith that is one-party rule in SA, and new contenders, claiming to offer new solutions, are agitating in its shadow.

The onrushing and inevitable collapse of the ANC, however, is about to topple the monolith that is one-party rule in SA, and new contenders, claiming to offer new solutions, are agitating in its shadow.

Former Business Day editor Songezo Zibi, for example, says he is prepared to run for president, and has been writing with passionate eloquence about reinventing politics in SA.

If reinvention is a bridge too far for some, rebranding works too. According to ActionSA’s Twitter account, leader Herman Mashaba has banned the word “comrades” from his party on the grounds that it describes “thugs and thieves”. Instead, says Mashaba, he and his followers shall henceforth be known as “Actioners”.

Cynics might point out that “actioner” is a Hollywood term for a big-budget action film — a fiction aimed at making a huge amount of money from a public dazzled by spectacle and comforted by the triumph of simplistic good over exaggerated evil — but I think it’s a lot better than some alternatives like, say, “People Who Refuse To Admit That The Death Penalty Is Not A Deterrent, Mostly Because Capital Punishment Plays Super-Well With A Scared And Traumatised Electorate”.

Down in the Central Karoo, meanwhile, Gayton McKenzie — described by Wikipedia as “a former South African convicted criminal, bank robber, gangster, businessman, motivational speaker, author, and president of the Patriotic Alliance” — has understood that people want deeds rather than new words, and has embarked on a spectacular series of photo ops featuring new factories, freshly installed solar panels and newly fixed roads.

Clearly a man with big ambitions, McKenzie has promised to turn his municipality into Dubai, which will be very exciting news for local water engineers and international money launderers.

Most excited of all, however, are the residents of Central Karoo, at least if Twitter is anything to go by. McKenzie’s outings are fairly transparent politics, but after decades of ANC arrogance and idleness, it is very clear that we are primed to be wildly intoxicated by the sight of a politician working their way down a checklist of modest election promises.

The dangers in this are obvious: if the ANC could win the last two general elections, despite doing no governing whatsoever, imagine how long we’d tolerate a mediocre ruling party which did slightly more than nothing.

For Zibi, one way of raising the bar is to persuade SA’s professional class to give “all the major political parties the leadership, analytical, policy-making and bureaucratic depth they need to either govern effectively or to produce meaningful political contestation”.

It’s an inspiring idea, but it will be difficult to achieve in practice, at least at first. Many South Africans are so tired and stressed that they barely have the analytical and bureaucratic depth to boil an egg, let alone bath the kids and head out to a fractious, endlessly circular meeting of the town council.

Even if we had the emotional reserves, our relationship with governance is also a passive one, thanks in part to centuries of being ruled rather than governed, which, in turn, have produced either apathy or the immobility that comes with hopelessness.

But Zibi is right. At some point the excellent people of SA must transfer their excellence into the running of the country.

This is not our Watergate moment. But our watershed is coming, and we will have to navigate it, whether the kids have been bathed or not.