WeeklySA_AdminHOT POTATO: The story of a comrade the party of liberation wishes had never ever lived
with Sy Makaringe
AFRICAN National Congress (ANC) leaders always like delving into the party’s history to make themselves feel good, especially after going through rough political patches, like losing an electoral majority.
Its beleaguered secretary general, Fikile Mbalula, did it again at a press conference to unveil the reconfigured KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive team in response to the party’s haemorrhaging in the 2024 general elections.
This followed the sensational arrival on the political scene in December 2023 of former president Jacob Zuma’s new outfit, the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), which reduced the ANC’s electoral support in the province to a dismal 17,22% in the May 2024 general elections. Nationally, MKP contributed to the ANC’s loss of its electoral majority, for the first time in 30 years, when it was forced to slide down to 40% of the vote. Still smarting from the devastating electoral hammering, Mbalula tried to put up a brave face at the press briefing as he rattled the names of ANC heavyweights from KwaZulu-Natal who had contributed to the liberation of the oppressed in its 113-year history. This was ostensibly to demonstrate the party’s continued relevance and connectedness with the masses.
John Langalibalele Dube, Chief Albert Luthuli, Isaka Pixley ka Seme, Griffiths and Victoria Mxenge, Moses Mabhida, Bertha Gxowa, Harry Gwala, RD Naidoo, Fatima Meer and Dr Yusuf Dadoo were among the luminaries Mbalula mentioned as the ANC heroes and heroines of the struggle.
Interestingly but unsurprisingly, conspicuously missing from the list was the name of a fellow who was incarcerated on Robben Island for 10 years for conspiring to overthrow the apartheid government, spent 17 years in exile during which he also worked as head of intelligence, elevated to the position of ANC president in 2007 and served as head of state from 2009 to 2018. No prizes for guessing who that dude is, and what the reasons were for his name’s omissions from the A-list.
BLACK MAN ON HIS OWN
IF EVER there was any doubt that United States President Donald Trump was an unapologetic and unrepentant white supremacist, ultra racist and fascist, there was no better proof than the events that unfolded at Chamber House in Capitol Hill ahead of his Presidential Address on Tuesday night.
As he slowly made his way to the podium inside the House, Trump briefly occasionally stopped to exchange a few words with people who had formed an impromptu “guard of honour”, shaking hands with men and kissing women on their forehead. When it was the turn of a lone black man in the “guard of honour” to exchange pleasantries with the president, Trump simply ignored him as if he was never there and proceeded to embrace the next white person in the queue.
Trump made his position on black people abundantly clear a few minutes later when he told the joint sitting of Congress in his 99-minute speech on his 43rd day since his return to power: “We ended the tyranny of the so-called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies all across the entire the federal government and indeed the federal government and the private sector and our military. And our country will be woke no longer.”
It is high time African Americans revisited the “Black Lives Matter” mantra and sat down to analyse South Africa’s Black Consciousness leader Stephen Bantu Biko’s famous quote, “[b]lack man, you are on your own”.
POLITICS #101 FROM EFF
FORTUNATELY it would appear that the Democrats, judging by their conduct in the chamber, have learnt a thing or two about politics from their South African counterparts, especially Julius Malema’s EFF crowd.
In scenes that almost resembled the chaos that our parliament has descended into over the past 10 years, engineered by EFF parliamentarians, Trump was forced to stop his speech at the first slightest hint of disruption from the opposition benches when the Speaker, Mike Johnson, rebuked the Democrats and warned them he would unleash the serjeant-at-arms on them if they did not main the decorum of the house.
His threat was followed by the ejection of a few Democrats, among them Al Green from Texas. Those who remained raised placards reading “Musk Steals”, “Protect Veterans” and “False” as Trump went through his speech, to draw attention from his speech despite thunderous applause and cheers from the Republicans.
One would say the Democrats did everything they could to emulate the EFF, except that someone forgot to collect their blue gardeners and domestic workers’ regalia from the tailor to complete spectacle and win the battle of optics.
SPEAKER OR IMBONGI?
TALKING about political lessons, our parliamentarians may be bo-mafikizolo as far as democracy goes. But there is a thing or two our guys can teach the Americans, despite the United States’ democratic project spanning over 200 years and ours not even a half-a-century old. One crucial lesson US lawmakers can learn from our MPs is that House Speakers, who normally comes from the majority party, try to maintain impartiality in parliamentary debates and proceedings they preside over. Any hint of bias towards their political party is usually met with a wave of criticisms not only from the opposition benches but also from the electorate and civil society at large.
Contrast that with what happened during Donald Trump’s Presidential Address in Capitol Hill on Tuesday night, for instance.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican just like Trump, showed nothing of the sort. Sitting next to Vice-President JD Vance, also a Republican, directly behind Trump, Johnson showed his true political colours and did what is considered anathema here in Mzansi. Everytime Trump made a populist statement or lied in his 99-minute speech, the sycophant stood up and clapped.
If it were in South Africa, Johnson would have been eaten alive.
CLEVER FOOL
DONALD Trump is aware that many people around the world regard him as a fool, and he tries very hard to dispel that perception. During his Presidential Address in the Capitol Hill on Tuesday night, Trump again attempted to convince his myriad of detractors that he was actually a smart fella.
Complaining that other countries, “friends and foe” alike, including China, Brazil, South Korea, India, Mexico, Canada as well as the European Union “charge us tremendously higher tariffs than we charge them”, Trump said it was about time the United States slapped them with reciprocal tariffs.
He, in an unprecedented move, set the date for the implementation of the reciprocal tariffs as April 2, quickly adding: “I wanted to make it April 1 but I didn’t want to be accused of April Fools’ Day.”
This is patently ungrammatical. What Trump was actually trying to say was that he did not want to be accused of being a fool. Well tried, but it was not so clever, even by his standards.
DEATH OF A CITY
PRESIDENTIAL “visits” to the Johannesburg inner city over the past three decades have painted a grim picture of the changing face of the once glorious “City of Gold”. One night last week President Cyril Ramaphosa, a born Joburger, paid a surprise visit to a city he now hardly recognised because of its alarming degradation, grime, crumbling infrastructure and derelict buildings.
As the host of the G20 Summit in the city in less than 10 months’ time, Ramaphosa was right to feel anxious and troubled. He described his close-up, nocturnal experience in central Jozi as “a painful sight to go through”. Almost 30 years ago, then President Nelson Mandela took a walkabout along a crowded Smal Street, between South Gauteng High Court and the landmark Carlton Centre.
Being a longtime Joburger himself, the late President Mandela was shocked at the changing demographics of a city he until then knew as the melting pot of peoples and cultures.
This led him to ask one of his aides: “Where have all the whites gone?”
So much for “the world-class African city”.
