the ANC’s one-armed bandit’. It was made so much more palatable by Albie’s amused acceptance of it.
When the ANC called on the masses to make SA ungovernable, the graffiti on the walls of Orange Street reminded us every day that ‘A naartjie in our sosatie’ (anarchy in our society), while inconvenient, might be one of a number of strategies to bring freedom.
Soon after, when Robert Mugabe condemned homosexuals as lower than beasts, the gay lobby came out in full force, protesting against his visit to the World Trade Centre in Johannesburg.
One slogan proclaimed: ‘Mugabe go home, Zimbabwe needs a queen’; another pointedly read, ‘To MuGaybe or not to MuGaybe’. Funnier than that is rare.
Fortunately, the gift for sloganeering has not left us post-1994, as was evident at the recent doctors’ march to Parliament. ‘I am Manto-negative’, signalled how many doctors felt about the health minister’s inability to govern the health sector and her equivocation on providing antiretrovirals to the masses.
I shall never forget just before 1994, a huge mass rally was held at the University of Western Cape. The entire mass of students sang a most moving rendition of Nkosi Sikelele. From the back of the main hall, a voice croaked: ‘Manne, julle kan darem sing, al het julle nie eers stemreg nie’, and the audience broke into laughter.
We now have stemreg – the right to vote – and the world is at our feet. Hopefully the crowd’s cheering for Mugabe as he ascended the stairs of the Union Buildings to join the celebrations is not symbolic of what it means to have an overwhelming stemreg. A regrettable blot on the festivities in Pretoria.
Business Day 23 March 2006
Patricia De Lille, the feisty politician, is in the doghouse.
The darling of the media before March 1 2006, she is now the pariah of politics, having earned the titles Patricia de Liar in the Citizen and Mampara in the Sunday Times.
That is because she lied blatantly, saying she would not back the African National Congress (ANC) or its mayoral candidate for Cape Town, Nomaindia Mfeketo, and then doing so at the 11th hour. She continues to deny this, contrary to all media evidence.
De Lille’s fatal flaw is that she believed the image the media created of her. Desperate to have a black opposition leader, the media promoted her, throughout the election, as the honourable black opposition leader this country needs and overlooked her enormous political ineptitude.
The significance of this nail-biting contest for mayor in the City of Cape Town is that it exposed the leader of the Independent Democrats (ID) for what she is – egotistical, immoderate and politically irresponsible.
As the former chief whip of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), De Lille’s trademark was sound bites. Excellent at hurling political bombshells, her street-fighting ability masked the unsophisticated politician she really was. Her lack of political restraint from the time she served as a loyal member of the PAC to her current status as leader of the ID has exposed the irascible political conduct that led to her decline.
For years the PAC protected De Lille. It was entirely predictable that the day she started her own party, she would be unmasked. Those who feel betrayed today, and who voted for her in good faith, failed to see that her actions during the negotiations with opposition parties were consistent with her long political trajectory.
Already during Codesa, De Lille showed her true colours with words that have come to haunt her: ‘No, we (the PAC) are not in favour of power sharing and if we get some kind of majority in the constituent assembly, we will say to hell with whatever they agreed in the negotiations.’
In her relation to the Democratic Alliance (DA), she was and still is completely untrustworthy. She often used them for protection against the ANC, and would abuse them when things were not in her favour. In the Financial Mail, she implied – like Ebrahim Rasool – that, by voting for the DA, coloured people in the Western Cape had lost their racial identity and had voted for ‘the oppressor’.
‘The bottom line here is not an ideology but race. I can’t explain why, to use the liberation phrase, “the oppressed should vote for the oppressor”. Inside myself I’ve said it, “I know I am an African”, but many of our coloured people still need to come to terms with this.’
De Lille is incapable of seizing the moment. Relishing her role as ‘kingmaker’ during the mayoral contest, she pranced around like a queen smelling power for the first time. She tried to outfox the smaller parties by overplaying her hand and lost in a battle where one of her own betrayed her.
Overestimating her own political prowess, she became a liability to her ally, the ANC, to whom she promised much. But why would De Lille sacrifice so much if there was not a quid pro quo – especially given rumours she was offered a deputy minister’s post? Why the sudden love affair with a party she has sought to embarrass at every opportunity? Is she not like all ‘crosstitutes’ who are in politics for personal gain? ‘An honest politician is one, who, when bought, will stay bought,’ to quote US politician Simon Cameron.
If De Lille wishes to survive she should jettison the cult of personality around which the ID has built itself and do some hard political work to earn her credentials. The arms-deal bombshell was marred by her failure to follow through properly. She did not study the joint committee’s report on the arms deal, nor did she participate with Raenette Taljaard and Gavin Woods in the subsequent standing committee on public accounts meetings to expose the major gaps in the report.
One cannot ignore Parliament and spend a great deal of time on the golf course and expect one’s political credibility to stay intact. After all, it is Parliament that pays her salary. In an interview in 2002, De Lille stated openly: ‘I am only going to spend 10% of my time in Parliament, which means I’ll be a de facto absent member. I’ve decided I’ve got better things to do.’
What may seem like courage and principle – a phrase she used ad nauseam throughout the discussions – is stubbornness and a failure to compromise when it is the right thing to do. Using this refrain in the negotiations, as though it was a mark of integrity, provoked a rebellion among her gatvol supporters, one of whom remarked: ‘Kyk hoe lyk haar principles nou!’
Business Day March 31 2005
During the early 1990s, a woman student was raped in a residence of the University of the Western Cape by someone from outside the university. Students were enraged and vowed revenge. In heated vigilante action, they yanked a suspect off the streets, dragged him into the hostels and beat the daylights out of him. No one could control them and Archbishop Desmond Tutu was called in to deal with the mob. Realising that no priestly admonition would help, he waded into this storm of attackers and literally took the victim’s head under his arm, trying to ward off his assailants, who were intent on killing him. Tutu himself was boxed left, right and centre, but persevered until he wrenched the man from the mob.
This fearless priest has saved many from being necklaced and lynched by angry mobs. His courage knew no limits as he took on the National Party government, pointing out how its Christian national ideology was at odds with Christianity. Filled with righteous anger, he would alert the world to what was going on in SA, relentless in his opposition to apartheid at mass rallies, church
