The ANC has reacted to a shock defeat in a Soweto by-election by claiming that it is working on a “comeback plan”, but on Thursday a hilariously revealing tweet by a deputy minister confirmed that the only place the ANC is coming back to is rock bottom.
Last week’s loss of the Noordgesig ward in Soweto to the Patriot Alliance has clearly sent shockwaves through an ANC leadership faced with the nightmarish proposition of having to work for a living.
On Thursday, deputy communications minister Mondli Gungubele stepped in and tried to rally the frightened troops, taking to X to get behind the re-election campaign of Johannesburg’s alleged mayor, Dada Morero.
“His worship Mayor Dada Morero seems to have been moved by the genuine cries of the people of City of Jo’burg (sic),” wrote Gungubele. “He is now sleeping and breathing actions everyday. We wish him and the entire collective of the City to stay the course, because that is what people of JOZI (sic) deserve.”
The deputy minister’s eccentric use of capital letters was distracting but entirely forgivable: the ANC has always disliked capital and it makes sense that it would treat even capital letters with contempt.
There were, however, some fairly important questions raised by Gungubele’s tweet.
For instance: if it is true that Morero is finally starting to act (a debatable claim), why did Johannesburg have to wait until he was “moved” to do so? Surely public servants should do their job at all times, whether or not they are emotionally inspired? Or is the ANC’s ideas of governance that it is some sort of nervous twitch that happens only when the spirit takes you?
The deputy minister then refers to “genuine cries”, implying that there are genuine and non-genuine cries, and that only the genuine ones are moving enough to warrant action. If this is the case, how do Johannesburg residents make their cries moving enough to count as genuine? Do they need to accompany them with the music of Celine Dion? Would they finally receive the services they’re paying for if they stood outside City Hall and sang, “I need my roads fixed and my trash collected,” to the tune of My Heart Will Go On?
Finally, the deputy minister claims that Morero is “sleeping and breathing actions every day”, but it unclear whether, between the sleeping and the breathing of actions, the mayor is also doing any actions.
Of course, all of these questions can be distilled into just one: how stupid does the deputy minister and the rest of the ANC think the citizens of Johannesburg are?
So far, the answer to that question has been: very, very stupid.
Which asks one final question: how long will those citizens put up with it?
The answer is coming next year …
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