“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.”
These lines, from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, capture what seems to be a recurring theme of our lives. The Bard’s metaphor helps us to avoid suffering mini strokes as we watch our leaders strut their stuff on the political stage uttering incantations. Meanwhile, we, the spellbound audience, look on in comical disbelief.
Life, it would appear from this staged performance, is an illusion. And our politicians are performing.
In Shakespeare’s seven stages of life, from childhood to old age (the infant, the schoolboy, the lover, the soldier, the justice, the “lean and slipper’d pantaloon” and “second childishness and mere oblivion”), it is the soldier who seems most apt here. He is described as being “Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation”.
Strange oaths? Is that not what former chief justice Raymond Zondo would have thought when he eerily rebuked President Cyril Ramaphosa for appointing to his cabinet ministers who had serious state capture allegations against them? Zondo has said, “It was like the president was saying, ‘I don’t care what you have found about the people. I think they are good enough to be promoted.’ The recommendations made in the state capture report were based on evidence that was led transparently when the entire nation was watching. We are defending the report because we believe it is sound. But I had to swear them in, remembering what I [had] found against them.”
Like the rest of us, Zondo had not received the memo saying, “Don’t take it to heart! It’s not personal. We are all just performing. The cameras are rolling. All the world’s a stage. Just figure out where in the ‘seven stages’ we are at any given time. The oaths — don’t worry too much about them. They are strange because those who take them are not literal about them. It’s part of a bizarre pre-performance ritual. Part of a magic spell. Sit down, Chief Justice.”
Was Bheki Cele … just throwing Senzo Mchunu under the bus, or is he a bearded leopard jealous of the suspended police minister, who was reportedly trying to become ANC president?
The soldier, Shakespeare tells us, is “bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel”. Did you see the unseemly squabble between members of the parliamentary ad hoc committee about their being treated like children?
When EFF leader Julius Malema, who we know is a big fan of Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, acts as if he is teed off by Mkhwanazi withdrawing allegations that former police minister Bheki Cele received money from crime-accused “Cat” Matlala, is he unaware the cameras are rolling or acutely cognisant he is on the stage and the whole nation is watching? His is not, I would posit, genuine rage about being disrespected by Mkhwanazi, but rather mere purposive positioning of the EFF in view of the upcoming elections.
You can say the same thing about several other pretenders in the ad hoc committee who keep saying “I put it to you” or “Let me put it to you” as if their tired and repetitive questions will become original and penetrating simply because they are prefaced by legal lingo.
While we are entranced by the profundity of what is being probed by the ad hoc committee, the ignoble pursuits of our overly dramatic MPs and some of their guests simply floor many of us. Cele’s performance in particular was grist to the political mill. When he was asked whether he was trying to rule from the grave, he said he did not have one. Go figure. What many of us will remember is his pithy response to a question: “You are crying at the wrong funeral.” Perhaps it’s political nous from a witness not reliant on his notes to answer questions, or maybe it’s an ominous dystopian turn for a society with manifold challenges to deal with but given to drama instead of solutions.
Was Bheki Cele, for example, just throwing Senzo Mchunu under the bus, or is he a bearded leopard jealous of the suspended police minister, who was reportedly trying to become ANC president? This office is now considered entirely out of reach for Cele, if not both of them. And all he put on the table was merely that he was told something by a jailbird — nothing more. His evidence may well be true, but you would expect Cele to be concerned about securing evidence rather than simply regurgitating what he can’t prove. You’d also expect ad hoc committee members to drill down on this crucial part of his testimony.
But, alas, everyone forgot to ask the right questions and focused instead on how they were going to put it to the witness because, in the end, it is the “bubble reputation” they’re preoccupied with. For they wouldn’t want to be the “poor player” Shakespeare refers to in Macbeth who “struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more”.
And we have many that are heard from no more. Remember Willie Madisha, the former workerist who became a Congress of the People MP, who, on the parliamentary stage with all the cameras trained on him, ridiculed Dr Naledi Pandor’s accent, saying, “Hong, hong, hong.”
But the point is that not everyone who takes to the stage is suited for acting. Indeed, Oscar Wilde, with characteristic wit, remarked, “The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”
And therein lies the rub.
While everyone is acting, we the people are on the receiving end of their poor performance. Unemployment is high. Crime is rampant. Those whose lives have been ruined are waiting for the ones on the stage to save them. One day the stage will be turned upside down — when the audience members become actors too.
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