eParkeni on the 2024 Campaign Trail

News wafting through the political front are so bewildering, so defying of logic it’s hard to reconcile them as anything but fake news. Or something you’d expect on one of those free-to-air news channels that nobody who hasn’t settled his monthly DStv installment would bother tuning in to. Except the ones in question are – coming as they do from the horses’ mouths – the real makoya. In politics, we’re told, it’s called silly season.

You know, that time when it dawns on representatives that there’s not much time until their respective fates are to be decided at the polls. The time when some of them, four years ensconced in a deployment gig they can’t really perform, surrounded by staff scant more capable and drawing fat cheques they don’t really deserve, suddenly nudge the office secretary for a reprint of that speech from five, ten – or that time OR Tambo spoke from Lusaka – years ago.

As the beggared, dispirited Jabu emerges from his shack in Diepsloot or any other poverty-savaged township he should expect to be met by these silver-tongue spivs. Big cars, tailor-made suits, gold teeth gleaming between incisors fresh out the dentist’s surgery. They might be hauling along a few blankets. They’ll hug his wife and plant kisses on his children and after dispensing a food parcel or two, poor Jabu might even be tempted to let bygones be bygones by entrusting his vote with them. 

A tale as old as 1994.

As hysterical and shameless as the jumping ship and turn-coating taking place when it looks like the gravy train might be halting at the next station and the prospect of being left out – where the proletariat languish disconsolately – in the cold, beckons. Who would’ve thought that the ardently loyal spokesperson of the Jacob Zuma Foundation would be consorting with the hostile cohort that was a thorn in uBaba’s side, heckling him in parliament and demanding that he, “Pay back the money?” 

One lives and learns, I suppose.

“It’s cold outside the ANC” Julius Malema once sighed. Back then, – the same man who’d famously said he’d kill for Jacob Zuma (his leader in the ANC) – had just been booted out of the political home he’d vowed never to leave and swapped the green, black and gold for the red overalls of his newly-founded Economic Freedom Fighters. At least one comedian called him a flip-flopper as a result, but the show went on and the EFF are today a groundswell commanding massive media attention and packing stadiums. 

When there is a dearth in the politics of progress – which are buttressed on ideas – and you are sitting with a moribund economy, Malema’s populist rhetoric makes for hopeful listening. People want land, economic emancipation and jobs, naturally imbuing any talk of radical nationalisation with some degree of popular acceptance. Add to this a virtually infantilised Left, with the SACP and Cosatu little more than toysoldiers of the ANC and there is nothing on that end to keep the hopes of even the ideological, thoughtful voter alive. 

And for many Africans this means contemplating hurling their lot with parties like the DA, an impossible choice for those who still remember what life was like before Madiba walked out of Victor Verster. In years gone by, the DA had fashioned itself as a liberal alternative with open-minded proclivities. Nowadays it uses up its real estate debating Critical Race Theory, defending tweets on the ingratitude of those who forget that although colonialism was marred by brutal bloodshed, it also brought the aqueduct to darkest Africa. Sigh! The internal race wars – which the party would have us believe aren’t really even there – are then hardly surprising, leaving the voter of colour who’s searching for something different in a miserable predicament.

Thus the cancerous Stockholm Syndrome takes hold; swathes of the majority African population sticking with an ANC that has flipped them the bird, ransacked the coffers that are meant to feed those very people who are homeless, landless and half-starved all across the labour barracks that are the township. In a somewhat reactive campaign to take advantage of the moment, outfits like ActionSA, the Patriotic Alliance, Build One South Africa (BOSA), whose collective numbers and ability to reach diverse races could potentially make them the greatest threat the ANC has ever seen, serve as possibly another wasted opportunity by going their separate ways rather than joining forces. And that’s just a handful. A host of new players have been creeping through the woodwork; Arise South Africa, Xiluva and possibly more to come as the race to 2024 intensifies in earnest.

Which raises the obvious; if this is the election where the indomitable ANC is projected to hemorrhage considerable support, why are these guys not clasping hands and cordially talking to each other? After all, some are old colleagues. In various roles in previous political homes, they read from the same script. Furthermore, there are those commentators who feel that with well-defined policies, such a coalition could be more than a game-changer – a brand new grouping that could define the new trajectory and chart the rules to a brand new political game entirely. Regardless, Mmusi Maimane’s BOSA has in his crosshairs the small business economy; ActionSA are targeting the disciplinarian voter who thinks SA is overindulgent on crime; Arise SA are gunning for the youth with a keen angle towards technology. (The latter is an area eParkeni especially hopes to focus on in an unrelated article).

Not too long ago, the country awoke to Rise Mzansi, a new party chock-full of a variety of professionals and prominently qualified faces lead by former editor and corporate high-flyer Songezo Zibi. In a country where politicians are usually equated to matriculants who’ve been spoon-fed antiquated socialist rhetoric, this might have been just cause to pop the bubbly. Just one smallanyana kink; if Rise’s goal is to cozy up to the intellectual, erudite black man, they are probably on the right path but if the stats are anything to go by this sort of brother cuts up a very small percentage of the African demographic.

For the most part, politics in these quarters are energised bacchanalias with the sort of song and dance that seems a bit off kilter coming from the throat of, let’s say, a Mmusi Maimane or Phumzile van Damme who tend to round their vowels with the proficiency of a private school headmaster. Not for nothing that Malema’s reference to DA black leadership as “garden boys” serving the “madam” Helen Zille caught on a few years ago. Or that the term “clever black” is a reference way more insulting than it lets on. In fact, presumably quite aware of the finnicky inclinations of the SA voter, Maimane could often be seen deploying the amphibious technique of switching accents depending on who he was addressing during his stint as DA leader. Not quite cut and dry, the local campaign scene, and one must always be mindful of the iridescence that colours the post-segregation Rainbow Nation.

Faults notwithstanding, the ANC of yesteryear’s appeal indeed tried to live up to the umbrella of “a broad church,” incorporating the blue and white collar worker towards a semblance of mutual development and common purpose. But that was long before the cadres had learnt to cook the books and before they’d realised that terms like “fruitless and wasteful expenditure” actually have their hides pretty covered. Being held to account for who, Chief? 

Anyway, with these new faces in the fray lies an opportunity to rewrite history and change the narrative that has grown dreary and unpalatable when one assesses the reality of living in a country that can no longer adequately feed its poor or keep the lights on. Whether they might eventually see the necessity of joining forces remains to be seen. But here at eParkeni, we will seek them out if only to afford you, our Dear Reader, a better view on their raison d’etre. To tweak their brains, their motives and find out what is it they aim to do which the current leadership is failing at. That said, we welcome you to our series of articles entitled eParkeni on the 2024 Campaign Trail.