It is maddening, among SA's many other serious problems, that President Zuma is able to shrug off the vast expense of his Nkandla homestead, posing as helpless before the prodigality of his security people and Public Works, while those two departments blame each other for the R200m+ of ‘renovations'.
A directly elected president would not have accepted a new home in SA today at that price. And a party that faced real opposition would never have ok'd it.
But we must endeavour to keep our heads when all about us are losing theirs.
In his article In the national interest to build a strong opposition - BDlive, October 24 - Allister Sparks clutches at straws when he takes Helen Zille's kite-flying of a coalition among opposition parties to be the solution. He also looks for, alternatively or perhaps simultaneously, the revival of some sort of ‘movement', along the lines of the old United Democratic Front. It is a familiar, even popular idea. But it raises another question: can a movement any longer work? Haven't we just seen the ‘civil society movement' to get rid of e-tolling fail?
On the issue of a coalition, Bantu Holomisa has already made clear that all parties to one must remain independent, an early warning to putative partners if ever there was one. That aside, can we really see him, the fiery Mr Lekota and liberal Helen Zille all working together for long? Who would be the coalition boss when the tough decisions started crowding in? Who would be able to say, ‘This is the way we're going on this, guys'? Someone has to in every firm. How long before it turned into another Cope?
It is an even bigger mistake to draw conclusions from how the UDF worked way back when, in an entirely different world. The UDF joined together a range of disparate, largely disenfranchised interests in a single, clear and patently just cause: to overthrow apartheid. Circumstances today bear no comparison.