TOM EATON | Niehaus’s protest was as slippery as the soapbox he stood on

It’s not often that Carl Niehaus offers incisive commentary on the state of our country, but on Sunday, the twice-orphaned hustler summed up the ANC’s policy conference by standing outside it on a box onto which had been glued two fraying advertisements for penis enlargements.

As Niehaus held up a home-made sign reading “Ramaphosa Must Go”, his supporters explained that he was engaging in the same sort of one-man defiance campaign that current justice minister Ronald Lamola had waged against Jacob Zuma in 2016.

Niehaus’s stand, however, wasn’t protest. It was art, a living metaphor perfectly encapsulating the patently dishonest promises and patriarchal fantasies being peddled by both factions inside the conference.

Indeed, it was difficult not to see it as a kind of bookend or conclusion to a process begun in 2012, when artist Brett Murray revealed The Spear and sent Zuma’s courtiers shrieking through the palace in search of a fig leaf.

Then, Zuma was the Big Man, a phallocentric Sun King reaching his beaming zenith, a godfather who could rely on sockpuppets like Blade Nzimande to demand that City Press be boycotted for daring to publish images of the painting featuring the honourable member.

Now, almost exactly twenty years later, the only people who will defend Zuma in public are diminished little men in ill-fitting slacks and touchingly shiny church shoes, standing alone on a pavement where weeds poke through the bricks, sharing their soapboxes with charlatans preying on the private griefs of anxious men.

To be fair, there were also a lot of fairly anxious women present at the conference, as evidenced by the ANC Women’s League frantically trying to extract two more juicy pensions out of the fiscus by proposing that there henceforth be two deputy presidents and two secretaries-general.

ANC committee chair Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, likewise, seemed pretty worried as she revealed that the party had begun to suspect an “anti-ANC narrative” in the media.

If it’s any consolation to Ms Ntshavheni, I can confirm she is absolutely right. I know subtext can be very hard to read. When someone like me writes, for example, that the ANC is a rusting dumpster full of burning nappies, I can understand why some comrades, raised on nothing but “ANC Today” editorials and Fikile Mbalula’s Twitter stream, might believe that I am describing an actual fire, like the ones that happened in Baragwanath hospital or the National Assembly, and not understand that I am describing the ANC as a foul-smelling conflagration. But I am. I really am. And I’d like to congratulate Ms Ntshavheni for figuring that out.

I don’t wish financial stress on anyone, but it was a reminder that, to many people in that so-called policy conference, money is something rich people give you for holding up a sign ... No wonder the ANC is so suspicious of business: it has no idea what it is.

Examining any more of the mutterings that came out of plenary sessions, however, would be to mistake them for actual thoughts rather than the chanting of a cargo cult. Besides, the true spirit of the conference was standing outside on his box in the street, holding up a slogan in the hope of getting paid. At this point in the game, everyone knows the only policies that matter to our rulers are the ones being managed by their financial advisers.

The trouble is, the ANC still doesn’t fundamentally understand where money comes from or how it works. Consider, for example, the urgent advice of a certain unnamed comrade, who told the Sunday Times that Cyril Ramaphosa needs to be making calls “to Oppenheimer, Patrice (Motsepe) or whoever” and telling them, “No man, guys, please fund our campaign, because ... it’s good for democracy, it’s good for your company, it’s good for the country.”

Mostly, however, it’s good for not having to move back in with your parents. In the same article, another unnamed comrade bewailed the fact that a shrinking pool of donors was resulting in ANC employees “losing their houses, cars”.

I don’t wish financial stress on anyone, but it was a reminder that, to many people in that so-called policy conference, money is something rich people give you for holding up a sign. You don’t make anything, or build anything, or grow anything, or teach anyone to do those things. You simply have meetings and pretend to discuss policies then get your pay cheque from the Oppenheimers or Patrice or whoever. No wonder the ANC is so suspicious of business: it has no idea what it is.

Still, at least Ramaphosa had a good weekend, successfully isolating the Zumists, defeating their attempts to end the step-aside rule, and generally enjoying the rare treat of not being shocked by anything for two consecutive days.

Clearly buoyed by the experience, he gave a closing speech full of hope that the ANC was about to move forward into broad, sunlit uplands, or at least shuffle sideways onto narrow, foggy ones, failing which it might settle for subsiding gently backwards into a swamp, face down.

“This policy conference does give us hope for the future of our movement,” Ramaphosa said. “It has sent a clear signal to our members, our supporters, and indeed to the people of this country, that whatever our challenges, whatever our shortcomings, the ANC is alive.”

Eat your heart out, Shakespeare. Imagine how much more inspiring Henry V would have been if he’d stood on that battlefield and cried: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers! At least we’re alive, innit?”

Speaking of which: can someone cheque if Carl got off his box safely?