The silly season has started – or perhaps it never did end

IT WAS a “season of madness” in the ANC. It was the worst of times.

That’s the picture painted by former Mineral Resources minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi at the state capture commission this week.

The question is: did that season end at Nasrec in December last year? Or are we still in the throes of madness? Is the old simply refusing to die so that the new can be born?

Looking inside and outside the ruling party doesn’t fill one with confidence. What with the simmering and backfiring VBS heist mess, the Bosasa and Joburg’s R1 billion fleet management scandals, the growing fruitless and irregular public expenditure, and so on.

As we enter the silly holiday season today, we also enter another season of load shedding in earnest. Eskom’s in a mess and needs to be bailed out, either through our national tax coffers or our individual back pockets, through tariff hikes.

But it’s not all gloom in good old Mzansi.

As we observe World Aids Day today, it’s good to know that the costly season of HIV/Aids denialism is behind us. As we look back, we need to remember the long season of beetroot and African potato as well as the millions who died.

And as we remember the worst of our past leaders, we need also remember the best of them – like the Treatment Action Campaign activists who helped end that season of madness.

But, lest we forget, we still have a humungous problem.