The sulking prima donna

FIRST she admonished voters for rejecting her party at the polls last week.

Now Agang leader Mamphela Ramphele has decided that she is too important to take up one of the two seats her party received after garnering about 100 000 votes on election day. Instead of joining the National Assembly as she had promised, Ramphele would have us believe that the plan all along was for her “to be the bridge” between her generation and that of the two political unknowns she has sent in her place.

The truth, however, is that Ramphele is sulking because the electorate, through the ballot, has told her that she is not the modernera Nelson Mandela she has always believed she is. Good riddance, Hogarth says, the National Assembly is already overflowing with prima donnas like her on the ruling party’s benches.

It is high time she considered retirement.