UNCOOL: Tony Leon, Southern Transvaal leader of the Democratic Party
Congenitally uncool, no matter how many wily Jewish mamas with marketable daughters regard him as the biggest catch between Westcliff and Waterkloof. A free enterpriser who would doubt-less like to see the country run like a Midrand shopping mall by cabinet managers, Leon’s single greatest achievement has been to get the cordless telephone legalised. He bought his first talkie in New York City fearlessly defying customs officials to bring it back years before it was safe to do so.
The son of a Natal Supreme Court judge, Leon knew he was destined for great things from the age of six when his mother told him he would be the prime minister when he grew up. He attended Kearsney College, which, for the purposes of a parliamentary argument between himself and President FW de Klerk about who was more in touch with ordinary folk, Leon described as a “spartan boarding school”. As a precocious city father in the Johannesburg council, he was once ejected from the chamber by three security guards after ignoring the chairman’s repeated order to sit down and shut up.
His arrogance has left colleagues reeling. Peter Gastrow once said: ‘ Tony Leon lives in Houghton in splendid isolation from what’s happening on the ground elsewhere.” On the campaign frail he has had to hit the “ground elsewhere” running on several occasions: in Khayelitsha he was literally hounded out of town. On a tour of Alexandra, he wisely confined himself to the DP’s Battle Bus, alighting only to buy bananas from a spaza shop and to shepherd Michele Bruce, the only DP teamster to dare go walkout, back to the bus. Tony Leon reads John Le Carré thrillers, thinks Margaret Thatcher is fabulous and is in love with the sound of his own voice, which is rather like a bumblebee stuck in a bottle.
COOL: Patricia de Lille, premier PAC candidate, Western Cape
She looks like a Mitchell’s Plain hair-dresser and it would appear she gets dressed before dawn without her glasses on, but for all her down-home perms, polyester shirts and wing-tipped kaftans, Patricia de Lille has a certain — je ne sais quois. While everyone from FW down is trying to pull themselves up by their grassroots and make like The People, De Lille is the genuine article. She’s married to a bus driver and still lives in Mitchell’s Plain. She publicly admits to having one 19-year old son, Alistair but Rapport recently dug up a 25-year-old daughter whom De Lille dumped on her ex before the child’s first birthday.
De Lille was working as a lab technician at the Plascon paint factory in Epping when she entered the union movement. She confesses flat at the time she was so green she didn’t realise there were ideological differences between Nactu and Cosatu. Luckily, it was the PAC-aligned Nactu rep who came knocking at the factory door first. De Lille was already a seasoned underground campaigner for the PAC – she used to hide congress literature under a cupboard in a room her mother rented to a policeman.
In 1988 she became Nactu’s first woman vice-president. She was fighting for women’s rights long before the bandwagon came to town and perhaps the biggest favour she ever did South African women was to replace Benny Alexander as the PAC’s chief negotiator at the World Trade Centre. De Lille in full flight is an awesome sight and she is justly renowned for putting the fear of God into her opponents: Tony Leon looked visibly shaken when in a debate on Future Imperfect she threatened to “get” him after the show. While all around her wallow wistfully in peace and togetherness. Patricia de Lille tells it like it is: “Whether we like it or not, this is a struggle between black and white.”
UNCOOL: Peter Mokaba , chairman of the ANC’s National Tourism Forum
Apparently the superannuated youth leader is not as funny as he looks, although it is said he looks pretty hilarious when he puts a Checkers bag over his perm before going to bed to protect the pillow from his Black Like Me gel. Mokaba, who recently as 1992 was reading stuff like Lenin’s The State and the Revolution, will be remembered for many things, not least of all his undying devotion to Winnie Mandela and his curious attitude to farmers. While “Kill the Boer” was once his favourite saying, after being personally ticked off by Nelson Mandela, he told slack-jawed reporters: “I am prepared to go out of my way to save the life of a farmer who is being killed.”
After personally launching a penitent peace campaign to “turn stones info flowers”, he was awarded the ANC’s tourism portfolio: it is rumoured his efforts thus far have attracted a block booking of German skinheads and three Israeli flamethrowers. He is also making a strenuous attempt to democratise the Miss South Africa contest with fashion partner Yusuf Asmal. Mokaba owns a string of hairdressing salons, has released an album (Peter Mokaba and the Youth League Band), drives a BMW and admit to a weakness for designer clothes. These bourgeois afflictions notwithstanding he claims his favourite word is still “revolution”. Asked by a journalist what he least likes about himself he said: “Nothing.” He also said he has no regrets — the ANC probably has several.
COOL: Tokyo Sexwale ANC PWV chairman
Real name Mosima Gabriel, Sexwale was nicknamed Tokyo as child in deference to his love of karate. These days he directs his well-aimed blows at anyone who deserves them — including his own party. As far back as 1991 he warned the ANC that the long-winded speeches of some of its members were boring audiences to tears and suggested meetings be enlivened by picnics, films and braais. Voted the sexiest politician in South Africa by a 702 phone-in poll, he seemed genuinely embarrassed.
He is married to a white Afrikaner whom he met when she visited Robben Island during his 13-year incarceration. Although he avoids exploiting this fact to score Brownie points, he once told a bunch of King David pupils: “You don’t want my hair. But I love my hair. My wife has hair like yours and it falls all over the place. But why should our difference keep us apart?” Mopping up the spillage of Mokaba’s ‘Kill the Boer” fiasco, Sexwale suggested the chant be changed to “Kiss the Boer”.
While Sexwale is better known for his soothing and amusing one-liners (“It takes two to tango but more to toyi-toyi”) he can tear strips off opponents when push comes to shove. Sexwale is a compulsive reader, Shakespeare and the Russian classics being his favourites. He takes a pro-choice stand on abortion. But nobody’s perfect: he’s a homophobe.
UNCOOL: Sheila Camerer, NP deputy justice minister
Her early years were spent in transit: a diplomat’s daughter who was raised by an Albanian nanny, which probably explains a lot. She cut her teeth on PFP politics as a student at Cape Town University. That was until her Nat dad saw a newspaper photograph of her waving a PFP protest banner and told her to choose between the PFP and completing her BA LLB at his expense. She chose the cheap route and thereafter satisfied her craving for attention by winning the Rag queen contest.
Camerer makes much of her “I have always been a strong proponent of women’s rights” routine, forgetting that when asked to defend living in plush Westcliff instead of her constituency, downtrodden Rossettenville, she said: “A woman must go where her husband goes.” Camerer campaign outfits lean towards silk, pearls, leather and Guy Laroche jackets. Flitting between parliament and home, she keeps two sets of make up — one in Cape Town, one in Johannesburg — so she’s never without the right shade of lipstick during those crucial sessions. If you’ve wondered why she gets on to Future Imperfect so often, her baby sister, Roberta Durrant, is the producer. Camerer thinks her biggest assets are her “big blues eyes” with which she “transfixes voters.” She’s probably right.
COOL: Constand Viljoen, national leader Freedom Front
The coolest thing about the retired SADF chief is that, compared to his right-wing cronies, he’s practically Vaclav Havel. The other cool thing is he’s not a politician by trade nor, most say, by instinct: this is a good sign. An old soldier and an unusual one in that he views war as “always the last resort”, Viljoen had settled down to farm cattle and eat koeksusters in Orighstad when the call came. At platteland rallies, the gist of some of his more subtle arguments often falls on stony ears more used to being pricked by the simple homilies of Eugene Terre’Blanche et al.
Viljoen believes coloureds are also Afrikaners to be embraced by the volk; whether any coloureds want to be embraced is doubtful, but it’s an evolved thought under the circumstances. No pea-brain, although he is said to have no discernible personality either, Viljoen recently replied to an open letter sent to him by Joe Slovo, saying: “We are not colonialists, we carry the name of this continent in the denomination of our people. We are committed to Africa.”
ET has announced his willingness to serve under Viljoen as a corporal, but Viljoen remains anxious to give the Ventersdorp führer a wide berth. Similarly, he did not exactly jump for joy when mass murderer Barend Strydom left the Wit Wolwe and professed his desire to join forces. A fitness fanatic, and the sexiest thing the right has to offer (he can see his toes). Viljoen has an identical twin, Abraham, who works for Idasa — a mix-up could cause political havoc.