WeeklySA_AdminTRIED AND TESTED: It’s high time perennial political nomad Manyi exercised his options in fatigued MK Party
With Sy Makaringe
SEVERING his matrimonial knot with the African National Congress (ANC) to join the African Transformation Movement (ATM) in 2019, Mzwanele Manyi cited the former’s weariness as his reason for the irreversible marital separation.
“I have come to the conclusion that, indeed, the ANC is tired; that the ANC is fatigued. The ANC has reached a point of saturation,” Manyi told a media conference called to announce his defection to the church-based ATM.
He was probably right – the ANC had at that point been in the political game for more than 107 years. That’s an awfully long time to be doing the same thing year after year, over and over again.
Manyi, a political prostitute of note who has over the past six years been hopping from one political bed to another, has since been vindicated by people like Panyaza Lesufi, the Premier of Gauteng.
To illustrate this point, let’s start here.
The Africanisation of names of companies, campaigns, concepts, projects programmes and other initiatives has been en vogue since the abolition of apartheid in the early 1990s. It was a trend that was to serve the country’s social discourse and cohesion very well.
It reached a crescendo in the build-up to the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa when a Sowetan journalist called the Springboks Amabhokobhoko, a play on Orlando Pirates’ mantra Amabhakabhaka.
And, when three Sowetan soccer columnists nicknamed South Africa’s senior football team as Bafana Bafana following the country’s readmission into world football in 1992, little did they know that they had opened the floodgates for similar names to be given to other national soccer teams – Banyana Banyana (women’s team), AmaGlug-Glug (Under-23 team) and AmaJita (the Under-20 side).
National lottery operators were not to be left behind in this narrative. Uthingo (Rainbow) was the first on the scene in 1999, with its clumsily spelt slogan “Tata Ma Chance, Tata Ma Million”, bringing into question who the real characters behind it were. Ithuba (Opportunity/Chance), which was awarded the licence to operate the lottery in 2015, also could not have it any other way.
Local football sponsors polluted the environment with slogans such as Wafa Wafa (Do or Die) for the MTN8 knockout competition, Ke Yona (It’s The One) for the Nedbank Cup, Babize Bonke (Call Them All) for the DStv Premiership League, to mention a few.
So, when Lesufi called his ambitious jobs plan Nas’ipani, tsotsitaal for “Here’s a Job”, he thought he had come up with a master stroke that would assist the ANC reconnect with its voters in Gauteng.
But what the moniker did was to expose the creative bankruptcy that has been endemic within the ANC over a period of time. One would have expected the leader of society, as the ANC is sometimes called, to do better than that. But it is ageing. And very fast.
Nas’ipani is predictable, bland, uninspiring and tired, just like the ANC. It shows the party cannot come up with new ideas.
After all, it is the oldest liberation movement in the continent, so such things are to be expected, hence Manyi’s decision not to have anything to do with it anymore is perfectly understandable.
But Manyi’s new political home, the uMkhonto we Sizwe Party (MKP), is itself not doing any better in the creative arena either.
The party has come up with a similar jobs programme called Thol’ispane, township parlance for “find work”. Lesufi might not win if he were to sue former President Jacob Zuma’s party for plagiarising his “intellectual property”. But even Manyi himself will agree that what his comrades in his new party have done is a clear cut-and-paste job.
MKP is only 17 months old but it is already showing signs of running out steam and displaying symptoms of a party suffering from intellectual and creative deficiency.
Maybe it’s time now for Manyi to jump ship. After all, he already has one foot at the edge of the vessel after he was controversially stripped off his powers as the party’s chief whip in parliament.
UBABA’S COPY CATS
IN FACT, copying, cutting and pasting is what former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe Party (MKP) does, and knows, best.
Take its name, for example. As we all know, MKP did not originate it. Instead, the party cut (or stole) it from the archives of the ANC and proudly and unashamedly pasted it on its canvas as if it was its own.
After the party surprised all and sundry when it became a de facto official opposition in parliament following its unprecedented performance by a newcomer in the May 2024 general elections, many people thought MKP would bring fresh ideas to reinvigorate that august house, which had become boring and predictable.
Instead, its 58 MKP MPs, led by the now axed Chief Whip Mzwanele Manyi himself, soon started appearing in the National Assembly in fake military fatigue, an idea it copied with a straight face from the EFF, which changed the face of parliament when its rowdy MPs turned up in red overalls and domestic workers’ dresses after the 2014 general elections.
Nothing has looked so diabolical and clumsy than seeing a former judge president, in this case MKP deputy president John Hlophe, clad in fake military regalia.
Instead of portraying itself as a formidable and effective official opposition in parliament, the MKP has disgraced itself by becoming a poor imitation of the EFF, its junior partner in the House nogal.
What is Manyi going to do now because MKP, the party he eventually left the fatigued ANC for – after a couple of stops along the way of course – seems to be in a worse state of mental and intellectual paralysis?
After changing political parties four times in six years, maybe it’s time the tired Manyi retired.
CALL FASHION POLICE
THOKO Didiza is arguably one of the best Speakers ever to grace the National Assembly since the dawn of South Africa’s democracy in 1994.
She has been a breath of fresh air following the disastrous and lethargic tenure of former defence minister, corruption-accused and error-prone Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, who attracted a slew of criticisms from opposition benches for displaying favouritism, real or imagined, towards her party, the African National Congress.
In contract, Didiza is treated with respect by the majority of political parties represented in parliament, especially those in the Government of National Unity (GNU), because of the impartial manner in which she handles debate in the House.
It is work she takes very seriously. But someone forgot to tell Didiza that she was allowed to don her Women’s League uniform at the league and ANC’s events and no one would accuse her of being partisan.
A case in point was at the funeral of the ANCWL’s deputy president, Lungile Mnganga-Gcabashe, at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre in Durban last weekend.
While Didiza’s ANCWL comrades were resplendent in the league’s black and green colours, she became the centre of attraction when she turned up in a bright, floral and multi-coloured dress that shouted all the way to high heaven.
She was lucky, though, that she was at a funeral service of a comrade. Otherwise fashion police would have, handcuffs in hand, pounced on her at the venue.
A BAD JOB
GOING back to uMkhonto we Sizwe Party’s Thol’ispane programme, millions of youths desperately looking for jobs throughout South Africa will be disappointed to know that the initiative is not offering anything tangible by way of providing solutions to the country’s deepening unemployment crisis.
All it does, however, is to encourage the unemployed in its tagline to vuka (wake up), panda (hustle) and spana (work), the first two of which they already do on their own anyway without much success.
The only MKP politician this mantra seems to resonate with is Member of Parliament Eric “Papa Penny” Kobane, who recently “encouraged” 150 jobless men in his rural ward in Limpopo to vuka, panda and spana on a citrus farm at Endulini, in the Eastern Cape, more than 1 500km away.
The only problem is that Kobane forgot to tell the men, many of whom belong to the post-2YK generation, that he was giving them a history lesson of how it felt like working on the farms during those bad and horrible apartheid days.
No wonder all the recruits bar five made a beeline home less than a month after they left.
Just because Papa Penny grew up on the tomato and avocado farm ZZ2 in Mooketsi, Limpopo, does not mean democracy’s children must endure the same experience.
