Tag: helen zille

Helen Zille in a Mamelodi Sundowns Shirt

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I need to sleep. Desperately.

Tiredness has caught up with me after I failed to return to my slumbers last night after a particularly vivid dream involving Helen Zille opening a soccer centre in Khayelitsha, resplendent in a Mamelodi Sundowns shirt. (Ms Zille, not the soccer centre).
A quick search of the local news sites revealed that this dream had absolutely nothing to do with any recent event and that explains my concern. Why the hell would I be dreaming about the leader of the opposition? And why the hell would she be wearing a yellow football shirt?
She doesn’t even like Mamelodi. They didn’t vote for her. Atteridgeville is also strongly ANC, despite Julius Malema.

And before you suggest that I must be thinking politically, I can’t even vote. Even if there was an election coming up.
Any alternative reasoning doesn’t even begin to bear thinking about. Sorry, Helen.

Anyway, from that moment on, I was afraid to return to sleep, just in case I was haunted by odd dreams about vocal politicians in footballing attire. Thus, I am knackered. And I need to get some sleep because we’re due for more weirdness tomorrow night, in the shape of the traditional (and therefore it doesn’t actually matter how weird it is, because it’s been weird for years and is therefore wholly acceptable to be weird) Uncle Paul’s Christmas Party.

I will, of course, report back on this strange phenomenon, but as far as I can work out thus far, it involves kids being invited to Uncle Paul’s farm and meeting Father Christmas, who visits each year. If you think that’s a little strange, then just be thankful you’re not at Uncle Willy’s in Rondebosch.
I. Kid. You. Not.
Oh, and attacking people by throwing straw at them, before assembling about 200 kids, with an average age of six, on a carpet of straw within  a huge circle of bales of straw and giving them each a lit candle. Yep.
I’ll pack an extinguisher in the picnic bag. I know the UK is known for it’s somewhat draconian Elf ‘n’ Safety Laws (geddit?), but I don’t think you have be Professor van der Einsteyn to work out the potential dangers of the situation.

In Finland, they slaughter a moose (probably). It’s got to be safer than this.

Right?

Tony Leon on Concubinegate

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Former DA leader Tony Leon spoke out today on the Concubinegate affair (that’s my name for it, anyway), in which current DA leader and Emperor of the Western Cape, Helen Zille had a pop at Jacob Zuma’s habits of sleeping around. Whatever “sleeping around” actually means. Floyd?

It’s an excellent analysis of the situation, drawing on his years as leader of the opposition and utilising common sense and logic instead of the knee-jerk, personal tactics of his successor.

I think Bill Clinton got it right when, in appointing his first administration in 1992, he announced: “I want a cabinet that looks like America.” The fact that the Western Cape provincial government doesn’t look like SA, or on the face of it is overloaded with testosterone, doesn’t mean it won’t deliver or won’t be vigilant on feminist issues. But it handed a sword to the party’s opponents, who were delighted to plunge it in with vigour. And politics is often more about symbols than substance.

And while Leon is somewhat critical of Zille, he balances it out with the facts which we never really got to hear in her defence – that the ANCYL’s response was at worse, offensive and infantile (which we knew) and at best, somewhat hypocritical, given the make-up of some of their Provincial cabinets across the country.

When I led the opposition, I made a book- ful of mistakes when it came to an overheated response or an incautious one-liner. And I know how a single phrase in a letter or speech can be wrenched from context, or can obliterate the most thorough defence.

Zille’s reference to Zuma’s personal history was factually correct but tactically questionable. It struck a discordant note in the upwelling mood music which flowed from the president’s inauguration and the wave of optimism it generated.

It seems almost strange to be citing a voice of reason in this whole sorry affair, where mud-slinging, slanderous comments have been the order of the day. But it’s a lesson to us all that sometimes it’s worth stepping back from the heat of an argument and actually THINKING before speaking, rather than just throwing some stupid statement out into the public domain.

While I can understand the ANC’s glee at the gift of the all-male Western Cape cabinet – and their further delight at Zille’s foolish response to their jibes – the people I don’t understand are the angered DA voters in the Western Cape.

Zille’s defence has always been that she didn’t have enough experienced women to appoint to her Provincial cabinet, simply because not enough experienced women were on the DA Provincial lists (something which should surely never have been allowed to happen in the first place). But those lists were freely available to the public in the run up to the election, published in all the newspapers and on the internet. Anyone who had bothered to read the lists would have been aware that this situation was going to arise given the DA’s widely (and rather accurately) predicted ~50% performance in the Provincial elections.
Thus, if you voted DA in the Western Cape and now have a problem with the demographics of the Provincial cabinet – well, it’s actually your fault. Just because you didn’t do your homework in the days before April 22nd is no reason to cry foul now.

So please stop moaning and pretending you wished you’d voted ANC. You’d do well to take a leaf out of Tony’s book and THINK before you speak out (or maybe even before you vote in future).
Otherwise, you really do risk making a fool out of yourself. Or is it too late already?

Three reasons why we’re all buggered

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I had one reason why we (South African residents) were all buggered when I left home this morning. Now I have three. By the end of this post, I may have even more. But I’m not going to change the title, as that would merely serve to confuse readers even further.

1. A letter to The Times:

We must give Jacob Zuma’s new cabinet time to prove themselves. Service delivery is a difficult issue to advise politicians on. For the sake of our country, I hope God will guide them. It’s a great combination.

Nathi Khumalo

Jacob Zuma and God “a great combination”? I’ll say.
Hitler and Santa Claus must be devastated to have finally been usurped from their Greatest Combination of Political Leader and Make Believe Character top spot.

2. I agree with Jessie Duarte*:

Instead of answering legitimate criticism about the composition of her provincial Cabinet, she has chosen to insult and demonise the President of the Republic of South Africa. Instead of focusing on the real issues that face South Africans, Zille is obsessed with her personal campaign against Zuma.

Jessie Duarte, ANC spokesperson

Duarte is right.
Despite all the concerning and hilariously offensive ridiculousness which has followed (overseas readers, you HAVE to read this statement from the ANC Youth League), it was Helen Zille’s unnecessary personal swipe at Jacob Zuma in a letter to the Sowetan newspaper which started the whole issue.
And thus, once again, we’re left asking why Zille is still going after Zuma. We had the DA’s view on this pre-election. And since the ANC failed to win their two-thirds majority (just), we have to assume that their tactics worked (just).
But what is the point of this continued personal campaign? Answers on a postcard, please.

3. But it’s academic anyway: we’re all going to die of swine flu and there’s nothing we can do about it:

The so called “swine flu” does not exist, as scientists claim it has mutated and “evolved”, which implies evolution, and evolution does not exist. Therefore, this must be the will of God, and nothing can stop that.

RS Diaz, New York

Why is it that creationists always seem, somehow… less evolved?

EDIT: Chris Roper’s column
EDIT II: Umkhonto we Sizwe weigh in.
EDIT III: Significantly, the ANC distances itself from the ANCYL’s comments on Zille. Great politics. That’s how you do it, Helen.

* I always said that the day Jessie Duarte and I agreed on something, Hell would freeze over and the camels would come skating home.
    Today is that day. It is noticably colder already.

I’m not Zille-bashing, but…

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This article on news24 does rather seem to continue the “OMG, we’re all… doomed… doomed!”  scare tactics thread that characterised the DA’s final approach to the elections last month. And while I recognise that it is Zille’s and the DA’s job to question the Government, I’m not quite sure what value there is in criticising each and every cabinet appointment. I found her disingenuous use of Angie Motshekga’s quote particularly distasteful.
To whom did the DA expect that those jobs would be given? Were they really thinking that the ANC, having just wiped the floor (again) with the opposition parties would then appoint them into the cabinet?

And if so, why didn’t Helen Zille appoint an all-ANC front bench to the Western Cape Provincial Government?

I just can’t reconcile this:

“With few exceptions, President Jacob Zuma’s new Cabinet is bad news for South Africa,” Zille said.
Zille said Zuma’s decision to revamp the structure of Cabinet raised more questions than it provided answers.

with this:

Zille said the Cabinet needed to be given time before its performance could be properly judged.

Because it sounds to me like you’ve made your mind up already, Helen.

Stop Zuma?

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Impossible, my dear.

Yet that’s seemingly been the sole aim of Helen Zille and the Democratic Alliance over the past, final week of campaigning before the election. And it’s a tactic which has drawn criticism from many quarters for it’s negativity and single-minded determination to go after JZ, while there are plenty of other major issues and challenges which need addressing in this election.


Zille and her grand plan.

Sadly, it’s also a campaign which, as the international community sits up and takes notice in the run up to the election, has been reported around the world, with Zille’s scaremongering tactics dragging the country’s name further through the mud. See the New York Times’ report and the BBC’s South Africa ‘doomed under Zuma’. The latter is worth a look if only for the picture of Zille’s cabaret act – the article itself makes depressing reading.

This evening on the way home from a hard day’s science, I listened into John Maytham’s show on 567 Cape Talk. Maytham described himself as “revolted” by the Stop Zuma campaign and stated that he had been put off voting for the DA.
Then, in a shock move for me, I found myself agreeing with Maytham’s guest Jonathan Shapiro – the cartoonist otherwise known as Zapiro. But what surprised me more was that Shapiro, who was apparently previously an ANC voter but who will not be voting for them this time because of Zuma’s reputation, was also disgusted by the DA’s recent campaign, describing it as a “terrible mistake”. Strong words indeed from a man who has himself been accused of harbouring a vendetta against Msholozi. While he said he was still undecided about who he was going to vote for, the DA had joined the ANC on his list of ‘definitely nots’.

I don’t understand why the DA has suddenly taken this route. They are absolutely capable of winning the Western Cape in this next election, which was their stated aim. But whatever strategist persuaded them that moving away from campaigning on any other issue and concentrating on the futile task of “stopping” Jacob Zuma – whatever that means, anyway – has done them a great disservice. As far as I can see, having spoken to people, read newspapers and checked in on the local media, this negative campaigning has turned the voters away from the DA, Maytham and Shapiro being the latest examples of this phenomenon. If they had nothing to fight for, that wouldn’t be a big issue, but with the Western Cape as tight as it is, I can’t help but wonder – have Zille and the DA shot themselves in their collective feet by solely (no pun intended) going after Zuma?