Sunday. With the LGEs barely a fortnight away, the voices one was expecting to hear the loudest on the penultimate weekend before V-Day are astoundingly quiet. Or they are out there defending a crass utterance. Or self cannabilising in the wretched power plays of factionalism and internal party squabbles. The once upon a time electioneering hypemen of the ANC such as Fikile Mbalula was all teary-eyed before his knees buckled in real time infront of flashing smartphones.
Mbalula – crying, wornout and possibly decommissioned after a surprise victory at the Constitutional Court (which saw the apex court allowing 181 ANC candidate councillors on the ballot) did little for aethetics and party morale especially in light of the doomsday surveys and is hardly the sort of impression one would like to see from the man who fears fokol and is the self-dubbed post-Nasrec CEO of the African National Congress.
In one fell swoop, the famous braggadocia of the diminutive personality with the larger than life attitude has been dumbed down, leaving a perceptible vacuum for new voices to step up and keep the campaign rolling. Except there aren’t really any. In its efforts to hold the fort, the party has always looked within the ‘old guard,’ old cadres who have come up through the ranks of revolution, Struggle and comrade. Not for nothing that in his stint as the party’s you wing president, Julius Malema often found himself having to constantly tell the dubious story that he started his journey into politics barely as a pubescent. Or, for that matter, that the party’s veterans were all supposedly engaged in the business of the exiled ANC even though some of them could hardly have been born at the time.
The myth and lore of the selfless cadre who forsook all others in the fight against apartheid was serious mileage. Having a dangerous story about secretive meetings, covert arms caches and taking a bullet or a whipping for the cause placed you in halod stead, even if the yarn was not without some embellishment. It all went well for a while but the tanks were running dry and the cadres were getting older. The once sharp brains started succumbing to the limitations of aging. Suddenly the consequences were clear. With the exception to Jacob Zuma, the dirges became dull. The speeches were yawning.
And, because the proclivities towards retaining power trumped the need for allowing the emergence of new leadership, there wasn’t a functional youth league from which to pluck decent voices. It had been disbanded precisely because it was seeking to challenge the toppies and that was simply not going to fly in a power structure dominated by individuals who should have long been in nursing homes. That is why the tripartite alliance has been reduced to pretty much a conglomerate of individual personalities. That is why the same characters constantly keep creeping up whenever one tries to retrace the organisations’ post-democratic history and milestones.
Mbalula, for instance, is the one who alongside Zwelinzima Vavi, the SA Communist Party amongst others basically marched Thabo Mbeki – who’d been anointed by Nelson Mandela himself – out of Luthuli House and into the political wilderness from which the former president is still bitterly licking his wounds, coming out every so often to tell his former cadres just how incompetent, useless and how they’ve turned Khongolose into a basket case. Gwede Mantashe, Paul Mashatile, Blade Nzimande … These are the guys who’ve always been there and are getting older while at it.
The silly season has generally been a hyped-up, colourful circus. Green, gold, black, blue, red everywhere. Punters basically jostling for the podium. Or throwing hands. Maybe even making each other mysteriously disappear. According to a recent article by Toverview editor Riaan de Villiers the disappearances haven’t gone away although the campaigning chutzpah somewhat has. It seems that Ramaphosa’s dour sojourn flirting with gogos in Gauteng townships have been the most arousing piece of political theatre from the former ruling party on the socials. And his competitors are not doing too great either.
Herman Mashaba has been bumbling about incoherently on podcasts. Sounding grogy and ill-prepared, the Black Like Me mogul has been at pains to explain to the youth why his party has been virtually absent on university campuses, this whilst his aversion to BRICS has isolated ActionSA from the progressive black left. Mashaba may well have garnered a reputation as a man capable of fixing things but on the best of days, he’s also an awful communicator.
And, like the self-made entrepreneur that he is, also quite apparently revels in the attention which often comes at his party’s expense which is extremely unfortunate when one considers the exceptional oratorial abilities of his right-hand men Athol Trollip and Michael Beaumont. The former is impressively effective and fluent with the Eastern Cape’s Xhosa voter and just as capable on the evening current affairs interview. Beaumont is a logical, tactical speaker and would no doubt appeal significantly to members of the middle class. But it would seem Mashaba prefers to be the party’s mouthpiece despite the obvious, cringeworthy deficiencies let alone the anti-immigration rehashing when there are the more immediate problems of basic service delivery that would most appeal to the voter.
Julius Malema remains the most impassioned speaker of all, although severely limited to the sort of stuff he’s been harping on since the EFF first came out in miners hats and overalls more than a decade ago. Mantashe has consistently been making one controversial statesmen after the other, the latest of which has openly pitted the ANC Women’s League against him. Mind you, he used to be one of the most articulate, tactful aide de camp to any presidential hopeful. Now, like much of the inner circle, these guys are all self-mutilating, unprovoked and are constantly putting out unnecessary fires when a well-calculated strategy is all they would need to make a good last minute impression on the undecided voters.
Why would we expect it play out any different when the people who are charged with these things are way past their sell-by date? The madalas have lost their swag. Mbalula has his hands full. Individuals like Mashatile have difficulty shedding the perception of corruption and the ANC Youth League has long been co-opted into sycophants of the mother body. Where does that leave the rest of us? Well, in the unenviable position of watching what used to be an exciting expression of our democracy degenerate into struggling to find anything worthwhile to write about.
Featured image: President Cyril Ramaphosa. Source: MyANC Facebook page.