Who would have thought the eminent pipe-smoking philosopher-president would one day have to take a brief break from retirement to write a “Dear John” letter. It was not quite the usual such letter — penned by one lover to ditch the other — but it did mark the end of a distant relationship between former president Thabo Mbeki and the DA.
The pipe-smoker had banked on the DA to help make his brainchild, the national dialogue, a roaring success, thus demonstrating to the world that he is still the chief around these parts. But then DA leader John Steenhuisen started throwing his toys out of the cot because his boss, Cyril Ramaphosa, fired a wayward deputy minister for going walkabout in the US without his permission.
In response, Mbeki penned John such a long letter it took him a full day to read and another to reply.
Tormented with poetic riddles
Hogarth felt sorry for John Vu’iGate. After lecturing the DA about the purpose and history of the GNU, illustrating his points by quoting his own previous statements, the former president turned to East German history and post-WW2 German poetry — subjects that would send even the highly-educated Floyd Shivambu to sleep.
Bertolt Brecht's The Solution was Mbeki’s chosen poem. He likened Steenhuisen and Helen Zille to the poem's Stalinist “secretary of the Writers’ Union” and suggested they emulate him and distribute leaflets telling “the people to double their efforts to win back the confidence of the DA” or “face dissolution”. John is probably too pompous to ask Hogarth for the Nkandla Crooner’s telephone number, but if he did the Crooner could tell him it was precisely these poetic riddles that drove them to topple the poet-president in the first place.
Lashed with plain prose
Steenhuisen’s response to the letter could be summed up in one word — asizi. Well, it's four in English: We are not coming! But as he probably co-wrote it with GodZille, he had to add some spice: “We note that you did not call for a national dialogue during the disastrous term of your [successor ] Jacob Zuma even when the public outcry grew for his removal. It was only last year, when it became clear that the ANC ... was about to lose its majority, that you proposed a national dialogue. It is clear to us that as the ANC lost the confidence of the voters, ANC leaders began seeking ways of addressing this 'problem' as if it were a national crisis.” Ouch!
A family squabble — with spears
Speaking of Zuma, the chaos in the MKP gets more bizarre every week. Its members spend less time attacking the government in their role as the official opposition in parliament than they do on attacking each other.
They are on TV almost daily, bashing each other over claims that the party is nothing but a family enterprise. “What you find there is girlfriends of people, children of people and Zuma’s grandchildren,” former MKP national organiser McDonald Mathabe told Newsroom Afrika.
The whole thing is a mess. No wonder Zuma is fighting so hard to retain his ANC membership. Even he can see that Gwede Mantashe was right, Kubi pha — things are bad there. The spear stabs in all directions.
A confused confession
And then there is Not-Jimmy Manyi, the former government spin-doctor who sold his soul to the Guptas but, when they fled, took up a role as chief Zuma explainer. Realising that the MKP is under fire on social media for proving itself to be nothing but a stokvel for Baba kaDuduzane and his daughter Duduzile, Manyi posted on social media:
“When Anglo started it was a family venture by the Oppenheimers. When Toyota started it was a family venture by the Wessels family... Never heard anyone complain about the above. But when the Zuma family starts a political party, then it’s a huge problem. Apartheid lives.”
Try again Not-Jimmy — that's a confession that the party is a family business venture, not a defence.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.