TOM EATON | Turns out we pay people R200k a month to state the bleeding obvious

Outgoing ANC sock puppet Pule Mabe is angry. Not about the crashing incompetence of his party or the government he spins for, obviously, or their inability to generate electricity or learn how accounting works or run municipalities or a healthcare system or prevent entire railway lines from being carried away. But he’s still angry.

The object of his fury? The DA and its flagrantly flagrant “Power To The People” march to Luthuli House on Wednesday.

Trying to steady his heart rate while clutching all his pearls, Mabe told the press that Luthuli House is “not a playground for other political parties”. He’s absolutely right, of course. Everybody knows that Luthuli House is a playground for the exclusive use of the ANC, replete with the special self-esteem-building ball pond in which Fikile Mbalula is made to feel competent: “Find a ball, Fiks! You can do it, buddy! Any ball! Ooo, so close, honey, but that’s not a ball, baby, that’s your foot, no, not in your mouth, Fiks, remember what we said ...”

Of course, certain visitors are allowed to come and play from time to time — the odd Russian imperialist, French arms dealer or Swiss engineer — but Mabe made it clear on Wednesday that if the DA ever darkens his doorstep again, he will be forced to issue another laborious condemnation, so they better watch the hell out.

Mabe has often expressed himself strongly — who can forget his Mark Antony-like oration when, after failing to be elected treasurer-general, he said he didn’t want to “stand here and start behaving like an angry girlfriend” — but in this instance he will have felt particularly righteous, knowing that his outrage was shared by the ANC’s head of policy, EFF leader Julius Malema.

Ten days ago, upon hearing the DA’s plans, Malema wagged his finger at John Steenhuisen on Twitter, telling him: “Another party shouldn’t march to another party; in case you are not good with directions, seat of power [sic] is at Union Building [sic], not Luthuli House. Be warned ...”

By now you’ve probably seen the clip of the party’s emergency ‘energy dialogue’, during which the power went out and everything went dark, because the ANC has killed satire and cooked it (over a gas fire, obviously).

The final sentence, with its three threatening little dots, was a fairly predictable addition, but the rest of his tweet suggested that he has been impressed by how successfully the ANC has separated itself from its failures at Eskom, and is eager to build on that strategy himself, keeping party and state conveniently separate in the public mind, even as the party sews them inextricably together behind closed doors.

After all, Malema would still like to be president one day, and the last thing he wants is hordes of protesters clogging the lobby of the EFF’s headquarters in Johannesburg and getting in the way of important delegations of cigarette smugglers.

But I digress, which is a pity because there was some important news about load-shedding from the ANC on Thursday.

By now you’ve probably seen the clip of the party’s emergency “energy dialogue”, during which the power went out and everything went dark, because the ANC has killed satire and cooked it (over a gas fire, obviously).

What you may not have seen, however, was Gwede Mantashe revealing an extraordinary, perhaps even revolutionary, plan to end load-shedding.

According to the Artist Formerly Known As Energy Minister, talk of permanent load-shedding at stage 2 was “not attractive”. Instead, he said, “we must resolve to eliminate load-shedding”.

I know. When normal people like you and me are exposed to that kind of intellectual supernova, it takes a moment for the words to sink in. But take that moment, then gaze in awe at what the minister is outlining. Because what he’s suggesting is that at some point in the future, we are going to have resolve to eliminate load-shedding.

Are you following? Are you keeping up? Or, like a frail Mozart dictating music to a flustered Salieri, is Mantashe going too fast?

I understand if he is. I can barely see its broadest strokes, hanging just beyond my comprehension like a spectre of pure music and mathematics; but I think what the minister is saying is that his plan is to decide that someone should definitely eliminate load-shedding, between now and the heat death of the sun.

And that, my friends, is why you and I pay him R200,000 a month.