‘IT’S TIME CYRIL SPRING-CLEANED POLITICS WITH 50 SHADES OF GREY WATER!’
No more koeksisters for Zuma
AS A member of the ANC I may not comment on policy or person because we as a collective react as a collective, meaning we say nothing until we can find a reason to blame apartheid. As one of the few whites in Luthuli House – they say my white monopoly glows in the dark! – I have obviously met President Zuma during my last 18 months as a cadre. He pops into my kitchen usually just when the koeksisters are ready. Mshowerlozi has a sweet tooth . . .
Jacob Zuma has always treated me with great respect. Well, I’ve never been trapped in a lift alone with him, so I don’t know what would happen there, but he still allows me to call him by his Zulu name, “Innocent”.
Is he? Of course not. Politics demands exceptional intrigue in order to survive. The catchphrase today is “state capture”. Like “collateral damage” it disguises quite charmingly a ghastly truth. Collateral damage means dead people; state capture means a paralysed land with elected vampires feeding off the blood of each citizen.
Was Zuma the Dracula of the gang? Maybe in the dark with moonlight over the firepool in Nkandla. But to me he’s always been charming and very quick to laugh. Corruption couldn’t melt in his mouth.
The usual comment has been how stupid he is. How wrong that’s been proven to be. As the former ANC head of intelligence during the Struggle, he must have collected secrets about every member of the party. Remember, these are people who’ve been together for 40 years, either in jail or in exile. JZ has constantly giggled and said if he was told to go, he’d go. But ever yone is scared of what will actually happen when he goes, because once he walks, he tweets.
During the National Party regime we also had clever ooms [uncles] who knew enough secrets to allow them to get away with murder. And as for state capture? We called it policy and got away with it too. And that’s why I as a member of the ANC have the right to stand up and remind the national executive committee where I come from: Evita Bezuidenhout, former member of the NP; Evita Bezuidenhout, former SA ambassador to a black homeland; Evita Bezuidenhout, who voted for apartheid. Yes, I’m probably the only white South African to admit it. But also to add that if I hadn’t voted for apartheid, I would’ve been locked up in jail as a communist and a terrorist, and today could’ve been the minister of higher education. I have seen politics at its worst and I won’t allow history to repeat itself now. My grandchildren challenged me to go back into politics and protect the fragile democracy so that when they as born-frees can vote, it will still be there for them to make their dreams come true.
The real power in our politics is no longer in parliament, as we all know. That’s become either a DA parking garage or a playpen for the Teletubbies of the EFF.
That’s why I’m in Luthuli House, which isn’t only the headquarters of the ANC, but probably the one active power station the ANC has built in the past 23 years. Which brings me to the future.
I entered Luthuli House with all the prejudice that so many of us share – for good reason – believing that everyone in the ANC is corrupt, everyone steals, everyone’s a thief. Oh yes, I can give you six names every day that will appear on breaking news – and Zuma’s fingerprints are on most of them – but there are hundreds of thousands of other ANC members who aren’t corrupt, who aren’t stealing, who are sitting at their desks and laptops trying to balance our democratic turmoil.
Cyril Ramaphosa comes in as a breath of fresher air. Some say rather the devil you know than the devil you don’t? I met him in 1994 while introducing the new politicians in the M-Net show Funigalore. I interviewed Cyril and we spent the day trout fishing, nogal!
He was then the secretary general of the ANC and a major contributor to the writing of our constitution, which too many of us just take for granted. His passion for and his belief in the ANC was nearly catching, although in 1994 I was still a member of the NP, stocking up on tins of tuna.
We all expected Cyril to become the next president after Madiba stepped down at the end of his first term. But that’s when the dance music changed from vastrap to toyi-toyi.
Thabo Mbeki won as the new Idol and because our honeymoon with the Mandela Magic went on for too long, when we opened our eyes there was already a different rhythm in the dancehall of democracy.
Cyril didn’t sulk. He got on with what he does best. He can communicate, he can laugh, he can see the wood for the trees – and in the years that followed outside the playpen of power, he cut his foot to fit the shoe of success.
It’s not what he can do as our next president that challenges me. It’s will he be able to get the party back on the rails? All the carriages are bloated with the spoils of corruption and the engine unit is too high for our bridges and too wide for our rails.
My youngest granddaughter put it all in a nutshell. “Gogo, when you see Uncle Cyril, please tell him to clean out the cat’s sandbox in Luthuli House.” I was quite shocked. “What do you mean, La Toya-Ossewania?” She laughed. “Zuma’s fat cats have defiled their sandbox after years of Saxonwold diarrhoea!”
So to the new energy I say, “Roll up your sleeves and spring-clean our politics with fifty shades of grey water!” And to the Zuma poodles I can just whisper: “Go to jail! Go directly to jail. Do not pass a Gupta! Do not collect two billion!”