OUT TO LUNCH

So it’s coal-ition time in South Africa. Hardly appropriate in a world seeking renewable energy but what can we do? If we were really seeking renewable energy the ANC fossils would have been kicked out long ago.

The thieving rogues may have dropped in popularity nationwide but here’s the crazy thing; the parts of the country where service delivery has been disastrous have enthusiastically voted them back in for another lunge at the swill trough.

It is said that women who have been in an abusive relationship often move on to yet another abusive relationship and this seems to be the case with many ANC voters.

Large chunks of the country, particularly in the Eastern Cape, KZN, the Free State and Limpopo seem not to have connected a lack of basic amenities, sewage running in the streets and widespread corruption with the ANC.

Admittedly the results could be skewed by a dismal voting turnout but if you can’t be bothered to vote to improve your life then you fully deserve what’s coming to you in the next five years and I have no sympathy whatsoever.

The fact that the ANC have won less than 50% of the vote overall is only of mild academic interest if they are still in control of some of the most impoverished and wretched parts of South Africa. Great news for fellow gangsters and luxury car dealers but bad news for your average citizen trying to survive. But that’s democracy for you. Or rather ‘demockcracy’ as we know it in these parts.

So now the many media post mortems have taken place and the body politic has been thoroughly examined what conclusions can we draw?

Well it seems that there are no great winners here. The ANC have screwed up but not nearly enough to staunch the further bleeding of national assets. The DA has emerged from the dog fight with all sorts of wounds and the farcical EFF, led by a couple of as yet unconvicted bank robbers, has maintained its position as the party of choice for semi-numerate crazies and white, middle class kids who crave their fifteen minutes of fame on social media.

Of course, it’s a free world and who the hell am I to question the wisdom of a privileged, well fed, white UCT student to throw his or her weight behind a party whose unofficial manifesto is for white people to be slaughtered at some point in the future?

Maybe the kids are weighing up their chances between the complete annihilation of mankind due to climate change (estimated at 4 years max by the Insulate Britain loons) and the great white EFF slaughter-fest and coming out in favour of the extra few months the EFF may be offering descendants of land thieves. On the other hand, maybe they just love the fashion chic of those red berets.

So let’s assume that Pres Frogboiler continues to renege on his promise that the corrupt will be brought to justice and that the EFFers can continue to operate unhindered by the NPA. Since they have no obvious policies apart from encouraging their followers to have as many babies as possible (presumably looking ahead to an EFF landslide victory 18+ years from now) we can laugh the EFF off as a mere sideshow designed to keep the main stream media amused.

That leaves the two major parties, both of them their own worst enemies. The election results should have sent a strong message to the ANC that they are not nearly as loved as they imagined they would be in the run up this election.

Who knows where those who didn’t vote would have put their X’s but it’s unlikely that it would have been next to the ANC. So the thieving party are in even more trouble than the results suggest. Unless they can demonstrably mend their ways by 2024 it seems probable that they will be given the boot or, more likely, that they will ban elections in favour of a North Korean style one party state with Ace as Comrade Brother Leader.

The ANC don’t strike me as good losers and since the whole point of gaining power seems to be to steal as much as possible there would be great motivation to hang on at all costs while there are still some crumbs left in the cookie jar. Bearing in mind the lack of enthusiasm for democracy in SA this would be met with minimal resistance and what resistance there was could be met with small particles of high velocity flying lead.

On the other hand Pres Frogboiler could take this as a wake up call and start putting some of his many dodgy ANC compatriots in orange overalls in an attempt to win back both national and international credibility, kick the RET guys in the nuts, attract foreign investment and start creating those much need jobs. (At this point I had to have a lie down for half an hour after re-reading the sheer fantasy of that last sentence).

Then there’s the DA to consider. I’m thrilled and delighted to be living in a well managed DA municipality for the next five years and I wish Geordin Hill-Lewis everything of the best as our new mayor. He seems to be everything one could wish for in a civic leader; hard working, enthusiastic, honest, imaginative and not afraid to tackle some very tricky issues. But the party….OMG.

If the message hasn’t got through to them by now that the likes of Eusebius McKaiser, Chris G Roper, Sibusiso Ngalwa, Rebecca Davis, Refilwe Moloto, Richard Poplak, Adriaan Basson, Max du Preez et al hate their guts then there’s little hope. This doesn’t include the white anti-DA masses on social media and within academia who, while being very content to live in a DA run municipality, continue to empty buckets of steaming effluent over them.

What do the DA not understand about these people? Do they not realise that whatever they do or say, however well meaning, will be taken out of context and blown out of all proportion by these commie media lackeys?

Do they not understand that an unfortunately timed movement of the eyebrow will be interpreted as a ‘smirk’ and that smirk will very soon become the most famous smirk on social media? Do they really not understand that social media, and particularly Twitter, is not the real world but the regular haunt of nut jobs who can’t afford the fees of a qualified therapist?

If the DA want to build back better before 2024 then ditch social media and buy Helen Zille a simple Nokia 3310. Admittedly she won’t be able to store her QR vaccine passport on it but that’s the price you must pay for keeping her away from the dreaded Smart Phone.

Another pertinent comment made by a regular reader of this column is that the DA are regularly seen as attacking the ANC which is interpreted as a ‘racial’ attack and may account for the lack of black support for the party.

The ANC’s many failings are there for all to see and certainly don’t need to be pointed out in detail by the DA. It would be far better if the party used witty electioneering slogans as the Conservatives did before Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979.

A simple poster showing a long line of unemployed people collecting the dole with the words “Labour isn’t Working” said everything that needed to be said. That slogan would have worked perfectly against the ANC and would have been much less contentious than the ill-advised Phoenix posters.

The good news to come out of the local elections is that property prices in the Cape Town area are likely to rise sharply as those from up north realise that a coalition of squabbling political parties is not going to make a great deal of difference to all those potholes, extended power outages, trashed railway stations, cracked pavements, stolen cables and non-functioning municipal services. I’m afraid the tipping point was passed long ago.

*** ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

The Brits love their hard won freedoms and COVID has brought into sharp focus over the past twenty or so months just how psychologically damaging the loss of freedoms that one takes for granted can be and the enormous emotional toll it can take on a person.

I am one of those who support minimal government intervention which is why I have been horrified to see the brutal treatment meted out to the eco-warriors who belong to ‘Insulate Britain’.

In a free country it should be every man and woman’s constitutional right to sit in the middle of a busy motorway like the M25 and stop fellow citizens from getting to their various destinations.

Apart from a few obstreperous yummy mummies in their Range Rovers trying to get little Johnny to his harpsichord lesson this has been generally accepted as a basic human right. Particularly as the cause of insulation is such a pressing global issue.

This is why the British police have stood by and smiled tolerantly upon the demonstrators while getting a bit rough with the obviously right wing (and probably transphobic) elements who have been seen dragging them away by the straps of their rucksacks.

As Tracey Mallaghan, a spokeswoman for Insulate Britain, so eloquently put on Good Morning Britain just over a week ago, her children face an imminent future of drought, civil unrest, pestilence, mass starvation and more than a billion homeless people on the move if temperatures rise by more than two degrees.

So, understandably, this would seem a perfectly good reason to glue parts of your body to the M25 or any other road that is popular with motorists who want to get somewhere.

Sadly this is where the freedom ends though and latex gloved bullies have been ungluing demonstrators against their will. One man even glued his head to the road which gives an entirely new meaning to keeping your ear to the ground I guess.

If I were in the UK now I would be leading a massive demonstration to demand that every freeborn English man and woman should be free to glue whatever parts of their anatomy to the road they wished without let or hindrance.

As night-time temperatures in the London area are expected to fall to around 6 degrees C at least we can be assured that global warming has been delayed in time to stock the larder pending the mass starvation predicted by Tracey. Assuming you’re not still glued to the road that is.