NOT long now and it will all be over. On Wednesday we vote and the childish squawking and moronic babble will be behind us. Ahead, only blue skies, the coming of spring, an eternal joy that shall kill all sorrow and, of course, the Currie Cup.
As far as the campaigns went, well, here at the Mahogany Ridge, it certainly hasn’t felt like a local local election, but rather a national referendum on President Jacob Zuma.
Zexit, you could say, and the alternative, Texit — although some of the regulars believe the latter could well be redundant, as ZANC have already taken everything.
This is not, however, to suggest that local issues haven’t been raised on the hustings. Or rather, issues of national importance that could be considered local.
Far from it, and there were certainly no shortages of such concerns, including the financial mismanagement of municipalities, the ongoing service delivery failures and the violent protests in this regard, our now brazenly corrupt public officials, and the growing housing backlog.
As worrying as all these may be, they’re nowhere near as frightening as the education crisis, rising unemployment and the lack of job opportunities for the growing hordes of unskilled youth out there.
Interestingly, when the ruling party began its election campaign, some months back, there were strong indications that the ANC was going to play it safe and keep its president under wraps lest he do something klutzy and embarrass the party.
Like say something off the cuff. In public.
Zuma’s image, you will recall, was absent from the T-shirts and posters the ANC dished out at the voter registration weekends, even in his “home base”, KwaZulu-Natal, and there was a perception that Luthuli House had at last realised what a liability he could be.
Pundits pointed to the 2014 general elections where the Gauteng ANC had attempted to limit his participation on the campaign trail because, bluntly, the “clevers” — the black bourgeoisie — were appalled at the scandals surrounding the man.
Of course, local party officials were quickly and perhaps forcefully shown the error of their thinking here and soon enough there was that familiar fizzog once more beaming down on motorists all over Joburg.
Any notion that matters would be different this time around were quickly dispelled.
An unfettered Zuma has again taken centre stage, laying it on thick with mumbo jumbo about snakes in the grass and God and Jesus ensuring victory at the polls. He’s even warned that the ancestors would bring bad luck to those who voted for the opposition.
We’re rather disappointed, frankly, that there’s been no talk yet of men with tails and women with cloven hooves.
But who knows? The party will hold its final rally in Johannesburg tomorrow —opportunity enough, presumably, for the introduction of yet more horned demons and old apartheid wraiths to distract us from such issues as the ongoing murders of ANC ward councillor candidates and the widespread anger with the party’s candidate selection process.
Little wonder, then, that Zuma has been a powerful asset to the opposition. Rather greedily — and this is so like them — the DA have elected to make use of not one, but two ANC presidents in their campaign and are cheerfully insisting that it is they who are the true guardians of the sainted Madiba legacy.
Could they not restrict themselves to safeguarding Helen Suzman’s legacy? Perhaps the EFF’s Julius Malema is correct in suggesting parties leave the old guy out of it.
Personally, I’d wanted more Nimby-ish issues to have dominated the campaigns. I firmly do fall into the Not In My Back Yard category. But then only because the sort of stuff that has gone down there has been generally crap and what’s been proposed for the future in terms of development is just as horrible.
Here’s a thing: in a recent radio debate, Cape Town deputy mayor Ian Neilson revealed the city owned about 24 000 parcels of land — about half of which were vacant. He was reluctant to reveal much more about the properties, suggesting this could lead to land invasions.
Alas, this reluctance — according to another participant in the debate, the African Christian Democratic Party’s Grant Haskin — bolstered the perception that the DA colluded with property developers and “only certain properties are released to certain property developers”.
It’s a perception that will continue so long as political parties are not required to disclose the identities of their private funders.
We may wonder where the ANC found the R1-billion or so it reportedly needed to fund its local election campaign. Transparency demands that we ask the same of other parties as well.
This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.
