THE JOKERS IN PARLIAMENT
Instead of focusing on our problems, there were calls for an inquiry into whether Ramaphosa was a sellout or not
What are they putting in Cope leader Mosiuoa Lekota’s drink these days? Last week I had to stop, pinch myself and ask what exactly he has been ordering at the local bar — and what the bartender has been giving him instead.
The lights were out in SA last week. Literally. Eskom couldn’t do the one job it had been set up to do: provide power. Stage 4 load-shedding — the most serious and damaging category of “no power” — was in full swing. They have a name for this sort of thing: it’s what’s generally referred to as a crisis.
You would think that our lawmakers’ minds would be focused on this one clear danger to our prospects of turning this economy around.
You would think they would all be champing at the bit to hear President Cyril Ramaphosa’s solution to the problem and to tackle him on its weaknesses.
Not Lekota. The man who, in 2009, got 1.3-million South Africans to vote for Cope and who then destroyed that organisation through leadership bickering in just three years, showed us that he cares not a jot about what really concerns South Africans.
Instead, he accused Ramaphosa of collaborating with the apartheid regime when the two – with 38 other activists – were detained in 1974. Yes, in 1974.
Since then Lekota and Ramaphosa have been together in the United Democratic Front through the 1980s, in the ANC’S various negotiating committees in the 1990s, in official positions as secretary-general (Ramaphosa) and chair (Lekota) of the ANC, yet not a word from Lekota about Ramaphosa’s alleged collaboration.
He kept his mouth shut for a solid 45 years and suddenly had an epiphany because Ramaphosa quoted Theodore Roosevelt.
And so it was that while factories were shut down, children studied by candlelight and the economy juddered to a halt, the National Assembly had to listen to Ramaphosa explain what happened when he was detained back in 1974. Eskom? The electricity crisis? The growth and employment crisis? Who cares? Politicians were too busy gleefully smearing an opponent by labelling him a sellout.
Ironically, the same people who are calling Ramaphosa a sellout are the ones who labelled journalists apartheid Stratcom spies last year. Remember that? Not a shred of evidence was put forward.
You should have seen the EFF “commander-in-chief” Julius Malema, fresh from standing by and watching as one of his fellow MPS assaulted a police officer at the state of the nation address, quickly offering some of the EFF’S speaking time for Lekota to con- tinue with his allegations.
Malema said “this issue of selling out is very important”.
Yeah, right. It’s not quite the same as last year when things got so tense between Malema and Lekota at public hearings into the amendment of section 25 of the constitution that Lekota, seated next to Malema, got up and moved to another seat.
Maybe he was afraid he would be assaulted.
Or after the state of the nation speech last year when the EFF’S Mbuyiseni Ndlozi asked Lekota: “What did you go to Robben Island to do? What were you doing on Robben Island?”
This was because Lekota dared to question the EFF’S calls for expropriation without compensation.
Not to be outdone, Malema weighed in: “Comrade Terror, when you went to Robben Island, you were in Black Consciousness. When you came back you were a historical mistake.”
It’s not even funny. It’s just tragic. Nothing illustrates SA’S stark choices as much as a broken Eskom and its potential impact on the economy. In a week when we had the chance to begin fixing our problems, Malema and his EFF were calling for a commission of inquiry into whether Ramaphosa was a sellout or not. Seriously. In 2019.
We are just under three months from the elections.
We have a choice: do we choose people who will take the job of running this country — and holding power to account — seriously? Or will we continue to return the jokers to parliament?
The joke will be on us.