Tender trap for the unwary politician

You just can't win with some words these days, writes MUZI KUZWAYO

Politics is marketing. It all started with Pope Gregory XV, who started an organisation called Congregatio de Propaganda Fide to fight the then growing Protestant Reformation.

The word gained a negative connotation as politicians used it over the years.

Well, anything that politicians touch tends to get a bad name.

See how they have spoiled the beautiful word "tender".

Young men cannot serenade their dates as they fear it could spark the wrong question in her head. "Oh my goodness, is he a tenderpreneur "?

Even ordering a steak at a restaurant has become a challenge.

You can no longer say, "I like my steak tender", without raising eyebrows. If, like me, English is your second language, then you are in trouble, so you end up saying, "I like my steak soft". In this age of political correctness, the word "tender" will soon be referred to as the "T-word" putting it in the same class as the N- and the K-words.

Marketing a politician is the real art of polishing a turd. When US President Woodrow Wilson wanted to join World War 1 and found most Americans were reluctant to send their young ones to some far- off European war, he turned their opinion around by employing a marketing man, George Creel, who invented the slogan "The War to End All Wars". Suddenly people were willing to pay the price for eternal peace. At the same time, his marketing team Zapiroed Uncle Sam with his now enduring message "I Want You" to attract potential recruits.

Wilson's marketing campaign is probably one of the greatest cons of all time considering that almost a 100 years later, the US is still involved in a war in Afghanistan, and its tracks are still fresh on the Iraqi desert. In the intervening years, it has waged many other wars and clinched countless arms deals despite President Dwight D Eisenhower's caution about the military-industrial complex.

It all boils down to your marketing team.

President Barack Obama is the only president I know who won the Nobel Peace Prize while executing two wars. He simultaneously started what the deputy director of the US Arms Control Association, Jeff Abramson, called "an Obama arms bazaar". The world loves Obama even though he has sold weapons to Middle Eastern countries that are trying to crush their versions of the Arab Spring.

When the Jewish vote became crucial, Mitt Romney solicited the support of Binyamin Netanyahu. Obama's marketing strategist is David Axelrod. Netanyahu delivered 60000 American Israelis, Axelrod delivered 80% of the American Jewish voters.

Here at home, Mangaung is all over bar the shouting.

The incorrigible charmer will come out on top with a great push from the women's league. Msholozi may be good at charming women but, unlike Bill Clinton, he seems to be bad at charming the rest of the country.

That is because he always falls into the trap of blaming the media. It was not the media that accused Clinton of saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." Likewise, the president and his men need to understand that the media cannot put words in anyone's mouth, and that when he makes gaffes - which he will - he must simply apologise.

The world embraces the fallible.

• Kuzwayo is the author of Black Man's Medicine