Like clockwork South Africa's politics is shifting into top gear as general elections loom. Predictably a smattering of new parties are being birthed, along with ever-growing election manifestos and, of course, those elusive election promises. With this comes a general sense that anyone can make a go of running in general elections. First out of the birth canal in this heady season of electioneering was South Africa First. This conglomeration of ANC has beens and MK vets made a rather low-key appearance, possibly overshadowed by Mamphela Ramphele's brave foray back into politics.
Much like COPE, a bunch of disgruntled ANC vets have pooled their collective petulance together to take on that monolith that is Luthuli House. Good, luck is all I can say. A political party based on divorce-like resentment rarely fares well (remember that once esteemed ANC-breakaway the PAC? Does the party even still exist?!) COPE could also be filed under that raft of once-were-warriors of political groupings. The party has all but completely combusted amid the egos and opportunism that plagued its once promising advent onto theatre that is politics. To think COPE came in third following the last elections. Shame shame. But, hey, that's politics. I fully expect an orotund and macho veneer and election piffle from SA First as the polls draw closer.
One would like to think a woman as brainy as Mamphela Ramphele has done her homework as she embarks on this perfidious journey into the maw of SA politics. She has a history with the struggle, on par with any stalwart. She's made a name for herself in other spheres partially free of the political world. More importantly she's an intellectual who could inject some much needed intelligence into a sphere of South African life dumbed down for too long. Agang SA has positioned itself as the thinking persons party. Although around election time, thinking is optional, while sentiment and nostalgia rule supreme.
On the other end of the intellectual continuum, however, we have Julius Malema. I won't bore you with the details on his meteoric and amusing fall from grace, which seems to have framed a political rebirth for the once powerful ANCYL leader. Safe to say he's clearly desperate and very lonely. He's launched his band of red bereted 'Economic Freedom Fighters' and wants to make a go of it without the backing of his once beloved ANC. He'll no longer kill for Zuma, but for anyone who is willing to jump into bed with him. But Malem'as heading down COPE Avenue - a street so potholed with griping, whinging, moaning bitterness, it resembles a street in his own Limpopo home town.
The communists, never one's to stay silent in spite of their backward Marxist interpretations which are almost totally out of kilter with the current world, are also making a go of it. No, the SACP hasn't decided to sever ties with the ANC and go it alone at the polls. Cue the entry of the Workers and Socialist Party. Launched earlier this year the party has largely latched it's mandate onto the plight of mineworkers following the grim events in Marikana. Nothing wrong with giving the voiceless an outlet, but why oh why must socialism be resuscitated in the process. WASP (by far the coolest name for a political party, by the way!) can't offer anything really new in the way of a manifesto. Yes there's the mangled Marxist war talk, interspersed with 'Amandlas' and 'Phansis' which will always fire up a crowd. But nothing new can be offered if socialism is the backbone to your movement.You simply have to Google 'Communist Manifesto' to get an idea of how the party is structuring itself. If you don't fall asleep, at least laugh at the anachronism of it all.
So who's next? Will political chameleons like Patricia De Lille or Phillip Dexter change their colours again? In other words, who's brave or silly enough to get into SA politics amid the senselessness and madness? There's never a lack of idiots and so I fully expect the ballot paper for the 2014 polls to be longer than it was in 2009.
