Herman Mashaba amassed a fortune making people feel bad about their hair and then selling them something that made them feel a whole lot better about it. As a former DA-led coalition mayor of Joburg, the self-styled “Capitalist Crusader” has since gone on to make some equally hair-raising remarks to create a wave in his quest to rid the country of ANC rule.
This week though, as his ActionSA party celebrated its third birthday, his pet project to bring back the death penalty was thrown out by the barbershop assistants who constitute the “senate” of his corner salon. It’s a blow, for sure, because the promised execution of killers — a “unique selling point’’ — would have set ActionSA apart from the regular political mob that allegedly mollycoddles them in jail. But never for long enough either, oddly enough.
Mashaba’s ActionSA has also been in the headlines for its failed attempt to shame the DA into a coalition with minority parties in the Johannesburg council. According to ActionSA, the multiparty charter the DA and other opposition parties agreed to after a day at the tables at Emperors Palace, commits the DA to ganging up with whoever is available to ditch the ANC-EFF-Patriotic Alliance (PA) coalition now misruling the once-great metropolis.
The know-all DA refused to commit to a motion of no-confidence, preferring instead to try to dissolve the council and hold fresh elections.
The DA’s decision, which effectively keeps the ANC-EFF-PA coalition in office, has been made a lot easier by a video circulating of PA deputy president, Kenny “Sushi King” Kunene, doing his populist thing for female workers from the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA). At this “women’s day” event, Kunene plied them with expensive booze and gratuitous flattery. All out of his own pocket, he claims.
This proved too much for the DA, which slammed the “vulgarity” on display. Kunene also made a few choice comments on stage and said afterwards he was spoiling women who are in jobs one doesn’t normally consider to be a woman’s work. Or he doesn’t, anyway.
His most revealing remark, though, was that the party was held to allow common folk to see how the political class lives.
And there he was on the money.
In the founding values of ActionSA, one finds an anodyne, ideology-free outfit whose libertarian/utilitarian tendencies will offend none, excite even fewer. For a party commonly thought to strive for populist appeal, there is little about it that would be popular.
Kunene is the member of municipal committee for transport. Recently, he doubled up as acting mayor, using the opportunity to harass poor folk in the city centre, who according to him are living in “hijacked buildings”.
It’s easy to see why Mashaba should be set on pushing the DA to make common cause with the ever-pliable PA, which reminds one of those universal power adapters you buy at the airport. Wherever you plug it in, it works, banishing the ANC-EFF in an instant. But not the PA. They stay, helpfully propping up the new status quo.
Kunene and Mashaba display a common approach to our politics that goes something like this: the professional politicians have messed things up. So out of touch are they that they don’t know what the common man (or woman in a man’s job) wants any more (apart from free Hennessy). So blinded by ideology and party loyalty are they, they have forgotten the ordinary voter. They don’t care.
The antidote for this alleged malady is a form of politics that eschews ideology and principle. Commonsense rules and the man with highest bar-stool is boss. Sure, some may get hanged or deported, but for the rest life is a whirl.
In the founding values of ActionSA, one finds an anodyne, ideology-free outfit whose libertarian/utilitarian tendencies will offend none, excite even fewer. For a party commonly thought to strive for populist appeal, there is little about it that would be popular.
Which must be why Mashaba, in his capacity as a political TV reality show contestant and being mindful of what sells and what languishes on the shelves, tacked on a few off-balance sheet policy ideas to stir the masses who apparently aren’t that excited about a lighter shade of green.
The big one was the death penalty, but xenophobia and the promotion of the myth that “undocumented migrants” are to blame for unemployment are not far behind.
It is no coincidence that people with too much money and who bring an amateur’s vigour to politics all tend to be strong on law and order in their offerings to the voters. Excessive property ownership has only intensified their siege instinct. They know ordinary people are living in fear and that the system of deterrence no longer serves the public as it should. They’re safe, though.
This is a play straight out of the Donald Trump playbook. The “drain the swamp” lie. He came to office promising to “build a wall” and kick out illegal immigrants. On paper it sounds brilliant, if you’re into that kind of thing, but in practice it’s near-impossible.
Law and order populism, which the ANC and its ministers have also lapsed into from time to time and which will be a temptation in the 2024 elections, (remember “shoot to kill”), is an attempt to play out one’s personal morality on a public canvas. It’s mob rule sanitised by the political system and camouflaged as middle-class morality.
Imagine a state whose quality of services is so often a danger to society, as ours is, being let loose to perform the delicate task of executing other human beings? How many convicts will have been strung up before someone realises the intended victim has since been spotted shopping at his local Woolworths? A half-decent execution, as opposed to a well-meant homicide, is probably beyond our limited capabilities as a state right now.
Of course, homicide is unacceptable in most cases, but it’s hardly going to stop because we want it to. And why would inequality not be a factor, as hundreds of poor people are hanged while the rich enjoy the comfort of teams of lawyers to gain acquittal? No danger here of an attempt at the dreaded “equality of outcome”, which ActionSA is always warning against.
Businessmen-politicians mistakenly think they are in office to actually solve the problems of the world, and that they can, in much the same way that you construct a shopping centre or produce and market a gadget. In reality, societies limp through the present bearing the scars of the past. History weighs on all human endeavour. Inertia dominates. We resist, even what is good for us.
Political systems are devised in the hope that some things can be changed and in the certain knowledge that some things can’t.
The art of politics is in the ability to distinguish between the two.
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