Ramaphosa’s campaign team have steadfastly wanted Gwede "Tiger" Mantashe to roar back into his current position as national chairperson when the conference closes on Tuesday. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
“O jola le mang wa ma Top 7?”
That’s “who is courting you worthy of making an elite top seven list”, loosely translated from Sesotho.
Pick any Gauteng township and you will find adolescent children playing the popular hand-clapping game top seven, which includes a chant, from which the above line is drawn.
Basically, the playground game is about children bragging, with made-up names and various scenarios mentioned, about who is wooing them for dates, and what gifts one has been showered with as part of the courting process.
Nothing accentuated the ANC’s adolescent antics during the lobbying process for the party’s top seven positions at its 55th elective conference more than Florence Radzilani, the ANC’s Limpopo deputy chairperson.
Addressing sections of Limpopo’s 593-person strong voting delegation, out of an overall conference total of 4 426, Radzilani told the gathered crowd late on Saturday that the reason for the provincial leadership’s about-turn on supporting Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC presidential reelection bid, and deciding to back his rival, Zweli Mkhize, instead, was Limpopo had not been wooed with any promises of a national top seven position.
“Those who are accommodating us are those who are saying that comrade Zweli must become the [next ANC] president,” Radzilani shouted, to cheers and claps from her audience.
Essentially, Limpopo’s bone of contention with Ramaphosa’s lobbyists was their reluctance to make Stan Mathabatha — the province’s chairperson — their national chairperson candidate as part of the incumbent party president’s campaign slate of seven names.
Ramaphosa’s campaign team have steadfastly wanted Gwede “Tiger” Mantashe to roar back into his current position as national chairperson when the conference closes on Tuesday.
Nothing accentuated the ANC’s adolescent antics during the lobbying process for the party’s top seven positions at its 55th elective conference more than Florence Radzilani, the ANC’s Limpopo deputy chairperson.
I previously predicted that Mantashe — who is reportedly rampacious when he romps, earning him the moniker “tiger in bed” — has lost his political sex appeal, and will relinquish his 15-year reign as the sexiest man in South African politics.
Metaphorically speaking, that is.
But it is actually an insult to the township kids for me to liken them to predatory politicians, who are gathering for five days under the guise of adopting policies the country needs to yank itself out of its economic malaise.
It is a conference that is predominantly about patronage to get as close as possible to the levers of power and perpetuate the pillaging and plundering of the country’s resources.
You don’t believe me?
How else can you explain the behaviour of grown adults banging on tables while heckling Ramaphosa during his delivery of the ANC’s political report on Friday?
That behaviour had shades of a scene straight out of the musical film Sarafina, which tells the story of the bravery of the 1976 learner uprisings against the repressive apartheid regime.
In the Sarafina scene, schoolchildren smash classroom desks, chanting “bang, bang, bang”, while heckling a teacher who wanted to continue the apartheid government’s curriculum that barred teaching about revolutions of the past.
Again, those were children. The ANC delegates are not.
Those petulant delegates were encouraged two weeks ago to heckle the Cupcake-in-Chief by former ANC president Jacob “Nine Wasted Years” Zuma, who rocked up late during Friday’s political report with his daughter Duduzile “Ivanka” Sambudla-Zuma to stir up trouble for the incumbent inside the main conference venue.
That level of petulance was to be expected, I guess.
Meanwhile, the country has to endure the anguish of the ANC’s adolescent antics.
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