GNU blinded by Cyril’s light – for now

Alameen Templeton

Thursday night’s opening of Parliament and the launch of the GNA was a perfect platform for President Cyril Ramaphosa who has outshone his predecessors in his ability to kick the can down the road, but never pick it up and own it.

So, his opening speech had very little detail on his own track record, or that of the ANC, on the mistakes of the past and how they have affected the country. Instead, the coalescing of the GNU at Cape Town’s City Hall was all about promises for a bright, imagined tomorrow and nothing about owning or taking accountability for the mess South Africa is in.

Ramaphosa focussed the spotlight unwaveringly on his looming GNU future, turning up the brightness in the hope of blinding out the past.

Crime would come down, poverty would disappear and jobs would mushroom everywhere as the GNU addressed the needs of the poor, he promised.

The applause of his millionaire supporters nearly drowned out the fact that most of them were wearing shoes that would take most poor people more than a year to pay off. Ordinary MPs are paid R1.2million a year.

Of course, the mainstream media were all in on it, their “fashion editors” wheezing breathlessly over ever suit and outfit cut by French designers and worn by Parliament’s “warriors against poverty”.

The Citizen oohed and aahed over ANC chief whip Mdumiseni Ntuli’s R29 000 Louis Vuitton shoes, over Malusi Gigaba’s wife’s “eggshell blue” dress, over Gucci and Prada and just how much everything cost.

They weren’t to be outdone by the EFF dressing down for the event with their trademark red, prison overalls. EFF leader Julius Malema didn’t even wear his signature red beret.

So editors were at pains to remind readers he was recently a target of social media chatter for wearing a pair of Corrteo on Spikes Oxford shoes to the Durban July horserace worth R28 000.

Ahead of the event, Parliament said it had partnered with Proudly South Africa “in support of the South African fashion industry by urging Members of Parliament and guests to wear locally produced attire”.

That seemed to have flown over most attendees’ heads.

Which was fine for Ramaphosa who was in the business of selling dreams while tucking away uncomfortable facts. So, he shone his tomorrow spotlight n a high-tech, smart police force still not in existence that would “tackle crime and corruption” with “capable, sophisticated law enforcement agencies” to tackle “complex and organised crime”. No explanations were given why they don’t exist already.

Next, he swung his rainbow beam onto a very familiar can lying battered, dented and rusting on the sidewalk – endemic poverty and unemployment that has been a constant, national companion throughout the ANC’s 30-year reign.

Again, the past was blotted out by promises of a new, shining, GNU future where “collective responsibility” will no longer the ANC’s alone. It would see poverty reduction measures where fuel prices (does that include Eskom?) would fall magically free of global oil price pressures and Eskom employee wage increases.

The dazzling prospect of food prices falling without explanation was presumably predicated on those same conjured fuel prices obediently dragging down costs everywhere else.

The Magical, streamlined, bubblydelicious, candycrush GNU would turn around ailing municipalities that have stubbornly resisted the 30 years of “democracy dividend” by declining resolutely under a weight of ANC corruption into decay and service delivery paralysis, Ramaphosa promised.

SuperGNU would also get water running again with massive investments in bulk infrastructure and SuperbuddyGNU would forget about differences and would agree on a national health insurance plan for all.

Not everyone was buying it. That was clear in the more raucous event Friday morning as the elected parties gathered to discuss Ramaphosa’s speech.

Malema had promised to be less confrontational on the parliamentary floor, but his assurance couldn’t dampen ardour in the EFF ranks. So, it was the EFF that again took to interjecting and objecting throughout Ramaphosa’s minister speeches.

Sports Minister Gayton Mackenzie, flush in a new suit and a new R2.58million Cabinet Minister salary was the most ardent praise singer on stage.

He told the audience he would have been “a sellout” if he had remained outside the GNU because his supporters “campaigned hard in the rain and cold, door to door”, to get him elected. The EFF angrily interjected and said as a minister he was supposed to stick to government issues in his speech.

Mackenzie continued that the “GNU is the best thing that could have happened to South Africa”, appealing to Ramaphosa to “address the national question” and sort out the “Coloured people’s problems”. If he did so, he would be the first president to have done so, while the president nodded in agreement, apparently seeing himself as someone who has outdone Mandela’s efforts to address the same question.

“The only reason they call us sellouts is because they are not on the GNU train”, Mackenzie shouted, adding “the others” (MKP and the EFF)  would be left behind. “They bought the wrong ticket.” He said to laughter from the ANC seats and from Ramaphosa and Paul Mashatile who chuckled throughout.

The applause and his new salary seemed to go to his head as Mackenzie turned his attention to Judge John Hlophe, now a member of the MKP.

“I want to say to the honourable Judge Hlophe, I want to say I am sitting here and I am shocked because you have sent a lot of my friends to jail with Roman Dutch law, which you enjoyed … You never saw anything wrong with Roman Dutch law. Today, when you are there, now (as a member of the MKP), you are seeing something wrong with Roman Dutch law. I am going to pay for an appeal by ever one who has been sentenced by you because you sentenced them with the wrong law, according to you.”

The EFF interjected over commands from the speaker to sit down that Hlophe had written a judgment in which he had criticised Roman Dutch Law, “so you come here and you lie, you lie”