As change erupts across the world, politicians mired in the old order are facing an evolutionary crisis. Some are adapting. Others are finding a niche and sticking to it. And in Gauteng, they’re taking a long, suspicious look at the onrushing future, and deciding it’s not for them.
To be fair, it’s a fairly chaotic moment for most of us. I personally find it very confusing and therefore faintly upsetting to have electricity all the time. How has this happened? Who is responsible? Someone needs to explain.
The politicians, however, are really going through it.
Spare a thought, for instance, for the poor Democratic Alliance, gazing longingly at last week’s election in the UK and daydreaming about what it must be like to live in a place where catastrophic rule by a corrupt and inept government inevitably sees the opposition sweep into power.
Not that Keir Starmer has an easy road ahead of him. Now that the empire and the factories are all gone, Britain is a country-sized influencer — a thing trying to get paid for simply being an imagined version of itself — and Starmer’s government will only be able to hold on to the selfie-stick for so long before voters demand another angle.
Again, I must stress that Zuma isn’t necessarily lying: when you’re being briefed by Firepool Nathi, it is entirely possible that you’ve been shown a large fibreglass elephant stuffed with sweet wrappers and told that it’s a huge stolen ballot box, and are speaking entirely in good faith.
Still, at least that’s easier to manage than the crisis bursting all over the Democratic Party in the US. During Friday's proof-of-life interview, Joe Biden explained that only the “Lord Almighty” could persuade him to suspend his presidential campaign, and I can only imagine how frightened the White House’s interns are right now, each fretting that they will draw the short straw to glue on a long white beard, wait for Biden to go down for his post-nap nap, and whisper into his ear: “Let my people go, Joe ...”
Here at home, even our most polished hustlers also seem to have been unsettled by the ripple of change racing around the planet, and are struggling to remember which lie they’ve told to whom.
Take Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe Party.
Three weeks ago, MKP was dragging the Independent Electoral Commission to court, claiming it had evidence that the election had been rigged and that, by facilitating “the evil of subverting election results”, the IEC was committing a crime “equivalent to treason”.
Granted, the man signing off on these claims was Nathi Nhleko, the same footstool who once told us Zuma’s swimming pool in Nkandla was a firefighting tool. Nevertheless, the narrative was clear: MKP would not let this heinous imaginary crime go unpunished.
Last week, however, after someone with a law degree explained to the party that its claims and so-called evidence would be tested publicly, MKP hastily tried to withdraw the charge.
Still, you can’t keep a good man down, or Jacob Zuma, and on Sunday night he appeared in a video claiming that he’d seen evidence “as big as an elephant” and claiming that there was “nowhere where they didn’t rob us”.
Again, I must stress that Zuma isn’t necessarily lying: when you’re being briefed by Firepool Nathi, it is entirely possible that you’ve been shown a large fibreglass elephant stuffed with sweet wrappers and told that it’s a huge stolen ballot box, and are speaking entirely in good faith.
The point, however, is that the MKP leadership doesn’t seem to be on the same page, at least not when it comes to understanding the grift.
Luckily for them they have Zuma, who can explain it them again with a wink and giggle: if you’re going to create a business whose only product is fabricated victimhood, you can’t stop pumping out the giggle-gas. Allow your marks a single whiff of reality, and they start to wander away.
But explanations only go so far, and you can forgive the MKP leadership cabal if it’s starting to wonder where the cash is going to come from, especially now that the party has been frozen out of local governments.
They can’t even fall back on old rainmakers like selling copies of Zuma’s book out of the trunk of a car outside McDonald's in Rivonia: Mzwanele Manyi, the political entrepreneur who made that happen in 2021, has long since moved on to the EFF, no doubt having grown tired of being paid in IOUs and signed copies of Jacob Zuma Speaks.
At the very least, however, they have a hustle that might even become a going concern. The grievance economy is booming around the world, and if they continue to emulate the MAGA/Putin method — casting modernity as a Sodom and Gomorrah, and constitutional democracy as a corrupting and oppressing scam — they could turn a decent profit in a year or two.
The same, alas, can’t be said for the ANC in Gauteng, where its provincial leader glares defiantly at the future and fails to understand any of it.
Of course, Panyaza Lesufi didn’t have to invite the DA into his provincial cabinet, and his reason for excluding it will no doubt play well with his followers.
But the trouble with putting together an executive that is more than 70% ANC, and that comprises parties that represent fractionally less than a quarter of registered voters in Gauteng, is that when the province gets worse — and it will, every day — there’s nobody else to pin it on.
Yes, it’s a tough moment for the world’s politicians. But some of them have no-one to blame but themselves.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.