The lobbing of insults is pretty standard during an election, but South African politicians have gone a step further in the run-up to voting day on April 22, dragging Michael Jackson and garden gnomes into the fray.
The old standards — snakes, dogs and cockroaches — have already been dusted off in the verbal duelling between the African National Congress (ANC) and the Congress of the People (Cope).
Before Thabo Mbeki resigned as president in September, the Progressive Youth Alliance was stomping on, burning and chopping up the metaphorical dead snake alluded to by ANC president Jacob Zuma.
When former ANC chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota indicated he would be leaving the ANC, ANC Women’s League president Angie Motshekga commented of a former comrade, ”the dogs are leaving”.
Jason Mkhwane, chairperson of the ANC Youth League’s Sedibeng branch, said Lekota and others who wanted to ”destroy” the organisation were behaving like cockroaches who should be destroyed.
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, an ANC national executive committee member, has taken a dig at Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille’s Botox treatments, and Cope has offered to send ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema for therapy.
KwaZulu-Natal ANC chairperson Zweli Mkhize called time-out on the name-calling in December, but with what is regarded as one of the country’s most important elections fast approaching, his call appears to have gone unheeded.
Malema, often in the news for his comments, this week called Zille a ”colonialist” and an ”imperialist”, and for good measure said she was using ”Michael Jackson tactics”. It was not immediately clear whether he was referring to her new dance moves, and Malema’s voicemail wasn’t taking any more messages.
But league spokesperson Floyd Shivambu explained that the comment referred to Zille ”being dramatic about everything”, and her ”flamboyant flagrancies”.
Zille in turn referred Malema as an ”inkwenkwe” — the Xhosa term for an uncircumcised boy and so considered not to be a man yet.
This led Malema to question how she could take the matter below the belt with such authority.
Earlier in the week, Malema told DA Youth League leader Khume Ramulifho they were ”Helen Zille’s garden boys”, an offensive term in South African society, when turning down a challenge to a debate with the party, and he also said DA deputy Joe Seremane just ”smiles at the madam” when Zille is around.
In response, Ramulifho said Malema would ”do no better than a garden gnome” in a debate with the DA youth.
Laughing it off
DA spokesperson Fritz de Klerk said the comment about Seremane was particularly irksome but they generally accept the insults as part of an election.
The Freedom Front Plus has called Malema a gift to the opposition, but at the same time cautioned that labels like ”cockroaches” preceded the murder of at least one million Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.
University of Cape Town language specialist Kay McCormick said even though dogs have endearing characteristics, likening a person to an animal places them lower than people and takes away their humanity. Cockroaches, of course, take them one rung lower.
South African Human Rights Commissioner Jody Kollapen warned last year that we may be shocked and disturbed by ”robust” election speech, but that we should all be allowed to speak, unless a line has been crossed.
In December, Cope found itself apologising to the ANC after its youth leader, Anele Mda, said rape would be legal if Zuma was president.
Businessman and ANC supporter Tokyo Sexwale said, when he was reported for complaining about Cope parading old women door to door like witches for the sake of votes, that his comments were mistranslated.
He was complaining about speculation that ”Ma Mbeki”, Epainette Mbeki, may be siding with Cope — considered a catch for the fledgling party.
United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa laughs it all off.
The former popular ANC member says he was recently labelled a Bantustan leader, a reference to his time as a military leader in the former Transkei apartheid ”homeland”, but considers it all pre-election ”air pollution”, believing that to take the bait is to raise the profile of the opponent.
He was more concerned about attempts to lock party supporters out of meetings, or incidents of clashes between supporters of opposing parties, like the recent fracas between the ANC and Inkatha Freedom Party at Nongoma.
At a pre-election multiparty meeting on Wednesday, Holomisa said it was agreed that political leaders should be consistent with their pledges to the Independent Electoral Commission’s code of conduct, which is against hate speech and incitement, and not ”light the paraffin”. — Sapa