Political circus keeps sending in more clowns

ISOMETIMES wonder whether our politicians are a lot cleverer than we suspect. Or at any rate, a lot more devious. They always seem to whip up huge emotional issues when there are far more serious matters needing attention. Take the dismal matter of our national airline, for example.

It’s so deep in debt and run by a bunch of such incompetent political appointees that even if the government did decide to “privatise” it, nobody on this planet would touch it with a mile-high bargepole.

The politicians’ answer is to stir up an emotional debate about renaming Cape Town International Airport. They’ve turned the matter into an intertribal war.

Do we name it after the first San people who roamed the shoreline, or the political struggle heroes who fought the nasty white folk for freedom? There’s clearly no real need for a name change.

People will always refer to it as Cape Town Airport, unless they live here, in which case they’ll just call it the airport. But if you turn it into a political debate you might just forget for a while that our airline is in deep doo-doo.

You can call it the Malema Splendid Intergalactic Space Transit Rocket Port for all the difference it will make. It will still be home to planes that are totally in debt.

When our public health and education systems are in chaos, with medical equipment that doesn’t work and schools without toilet facilities, what do the politicians do?

They do what politicians have always done and create a diversion.

Suddenly they turn on their own party members, take each other to court, fire the mayor, refuse to be fired, dance in the streets, throw eggs, anything.

Who can think about mundane matters like school toilets when there’s a free circus in town? This is not a new strategy. Back in the bad old apartheid days when the rest of the world was isolating South Africa, our then government started announcing oil discoveries almost weekly.

We were bombarded with fake stories about huge offshore oilfields, Mossel Bay gas that would make us totally independent, and so on.

Who cared if the world wouldn’t sell petrol to us? We’d soon have more than enough of our own.

We still seem to be falling for the same old magic tricks, applauding the politicians as they pull purple rabbits out of completely empty top hats.

With a great show like that we tend to ignore the lack of toilets, the fraudulent contracts that resulted in inferior hospital equipment and the promised houses that were never built.

If the show becomes boring, all we need to do is send in more clowns.

Last Laugh

TWO friends were chatting in a bar. “Have you seen old George recently?” said one. ”Yes,” said his friend, “he looked terrible. He was on crutches and had a black eye.”

“Really? I’m shocked. When I saw him last he was in great health and good spirits and seemed to be living the life of Riley.”

“Yes, he was, until Riley came home early one day and found him with Mrs Riley.”