So I get this WhatsApp message on Friday from a friend, out of the blue: "I think that DA would enter into an alliance with ANC should ANC be below 50%. Maybe I am wrong. But more importantly, I think to reward the ANC with a super majority after what they have done to the country sends the ANC the wrong message."
This is my own fault. I first raised the prospect of ageing white males like me, normally secure DA fodder, voting for the ANC in the upcoming election in order to bolster Cyril Ramaphosa's political position and perhaps, that way, help keep the wolves of corruption and rent-seeking in his own party away from bringing him down.
The mere notion caused a reflexive uproar, perhaps best epitomised by an incoherent article in December last year by Gabriel Crouse of the Institute for Race Relations, in which he says I "enjoyed a high profile last year [2017] as the foremost champion of Jacques Pauw's book, The President's Keepers". Huh? I have had a high profile for 20 years.
Crouse then criticises the marketing of Pauw's book, which I had nothing to do with, for failing to point out how all the bad guys in it were black (is this really the SAIRR today?) and then says, idiotically, that "As Pauw's foremost cheerleader [which I was not] I lay some blame at Bruce's door for the fact that the connection spelt out between corruption and race-baiting was lost to mainstream media channels, in which Bruce ranks tops."
By the time Pauw's book was launched I was no longer editor, or "tops", of anything. His deranged article is the best evidence I've come across that the mere suggestion that sentient older whites might vote ANC this May 8 can drive people to the edge of insanity.
I replied to my friend like this: "I don't understand what you mean. Helen Zille says if you want to support Cyril you have to vote DA. But here is James Selfe, quoted in Jan-Jan Joubert's book Who Will Rule in 2019?: 'We are reasonably open to working with anyone - except the ANC in the way it is currently constituted. If we have enough in common with an ANC breakaway group to govern with them, like the commitment we share with the EFF to root out corruption, we can talk about it. But is Mr Ramaphosa serious about rooting out corruption?'"
I concluded to my friend: "I think that is the most stupid assembly of thoughts I have heard a politician put together in a long time.' "
Yes, according to the DA's federal executive chair, just before Ramaphosa won the ANC leadership, and on the assumption he would win it, the DA shares the EFF's "commitment" to rooting out corruption.
Hardly had that exchange finished than the phone rang. It was the leader of the opposition. I immediately continued my argument with him and quoted Joubert's book at him.
Joubert had also interviewed Mmusi Maimane, who had said much the same as Selfe, on the same premise, at around the same time, in November 2017. So Jacob Zuma loomed larger in their thinking than he may now. But nonetheless I find the attitude to the EFF truly shocking given that it comes from the top of the DA. EFF economics on their own would do great harm to this country but there are elements, lots of them, in the rotten and corrupted ANC that would do it good.
But are they simply to be ignored? Because, perhaps, the DA in any coalition or arrangement with the ANC would be the junior partner? Is it that sad? Maimane directed me to a speech he made in 2017. A good one, where he talks about coalitions.
"If we can make metro coalitions work," he said, "then we can make it work in national government too. We need to put all our energies into saving our country. And I am prepared to work with all parties that share this goal. This includes those good people remaining in the ANC who have been moved by recent events to speak out about what is happening in their party.
"Today, I extend a hand of friendship to all of them. I want them to know that we are open to working with them in the future, in a new and realigned political landscape."
That is all well and good, but I still want to know from the DA that it is not going to hand Ramaphosa over to the EFF if he needs partners or merely support in the national or provincial governments. Will they fight, with Ramaphosa, to clean up the state, or not? The time for a response to that elephant in the room was yesterday, at its manifesto launch in Johannesburg, by which time this column is done and dusted.
I wonder what it was?..