PARTY RHETORIC IS AS HARMLESS AS A RAH-RAH RALLYING CALL

THESE LAST few weeks I have not been at my best. I have had to deal with issues of health and a spontaneously imploding dinosaur of a computer.

But there is an election coming, and life’s rule says that just men need to speak up when evil refuses to go away. Or when evil reinvents itself by dressing in more tantalising garb and re-emerges as something else. The term, “mutton dressed up as lamb” comes to mind, or as the Bard would say, “… once more into the breach …”

The signifiers which triggered the panic, I feel, are predictable and utterly shameless. I saw the street light poles festooned with robustly colourful portraits and strident promises to heal, change, fix, and improve. The rhetoric is as harmless as a rah-rah rallying call, but what if there are ironies that cause fair-minded men to wonder just what it is that we are facing.

One party is advertising itself as “good”. I use the grammatical function of the adjective which describes acceptable, worthwhile, salubrious, medicinal, sincere and so forth actions. But the party has a leader who, at the time of writing, is a member of the ANC cabinet and, as such, should not sit on one chair, and at the same time bay against the atrocities perpetrated by this very party for the last 30 years by announcing herself stridently as the head candidate to lead the “new” party as official opposition.

This personage has, since freedom, been a high-profiler in the PAC, the ID and the DA. Out of these experiences, she created the party that claims to be good while she is carrying a portfolio in the very political entity she seeks to replace and improve upon. I am not launching a personalised attack, as I am only a columnist. I look at my own experiences, try to make them resonate with my readers and then we move to the next step, which is national cohesion for the good of the nation.

Somehow, I had a sense of disquiet, especially since the leader of this party stated with great conviction that nothing would change after the voting was done. That is about as close as the personage has ever come to the truth. Readers might recall that before she crossed the floor to serve in Cyril’s Cabinet, she seemed to have access to limitless funds to pay for legislation to “clear her name”. That was legitimate and praiseworthy because it demonstrated clearly that we, the proles who observe the antics of the high and the mighty, could also access the courts of law when our reputations or actions were sullied by low-flung cow-dung (loved typing that).

But lo and behold, she sits in the ranks of her direct enemy, wallowing in the advantages that accrue, and almost indecently bites the hand that is ostensibly feeding her. This is openfaced chicanery that shows not a modicum of modesty or subtlety. This is the mother of Easter Egg hunts. At the end lies a massive handout for what?

Now, before I get accused of playing the man and not the ball, or, ironically, get asked whether I intend to launch the party that can hold back the tide of lying, obfuscating and promising the same way King Canute tried to hold back the incoming tide, let me clear the air.

I’ve responded to one candidate who intends to run. We observe the rule of respecting the person and not fighting by jibes, boos, thumbs-down signs or turning our backs on this insulting behaviour. Because, dear reader, we’ve had, and failed at, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the massive Zondo marshmallow inquisition and other puerile and lame attempts at honest governance.

So, my scepticism at the promises, my experience of living to be 84 years old, and my readiness to be educated despite knowing better, will all wash down the same drain of arrogance, indifference, and the odd handout of R10 which should turn around the pathetic tale of hunger and homelessness. Add to that a dollop of hopelessness. What to do?