Loose cannon:Robert Kirby
You know politics is getting eminently stupid when Pik Botha threatens to join the ANC. Foreign minister to foreign object in one easy step. What’s more, it’s entirely the wrong step. What Pik should really be doing is thinking about reviving that trusty old gang of crypto-fascists he used to help manage. He should wash, polish and crank up the party that was his natural habitat for so many years; revitalise those tried and tested us-and-them-down- theeeeeeeeeere values that so many South Africans still long for and can’t find any evidence of in all the new-fangled contraptions. “Freedom Front,” indeed! No decent, God fearing backvelder likes to hear sordid words like “freedom” included in a political party’s name. “Peoples'” is even worse. “New” is another no-no. And as for “Democratic” …
Pik Botha needs to get his head out of his potjie and recognise that there’s a great big gaping hole in the electoral fundament. It’s screaming out to be filled. It’s no use lurching up and saying the next election will see the end of the National Party. Pik should be more specific and say the “new” National Party because there’s plenty of life left in the party Pik used to cruise around in. Many’s the good tune still to be played on an old kruithoring. There’s still time before the election lists close and Pik Botha would be the ideal leader of what should quite obviously be called the Old National Party.
It’s happening all over the place. Just look at Russia, where the communists are a continual and growing threat to the liberalising policies of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Given half a chance the Russian populace would swarm eagerly back to their collective farms, their tractor factories, their weekly turnip rations – a good sight more than they’re getting at the moment. Proudly they’d flock again to the May Day military parades, read Pravda editorials on the bulletin boards, call each other Comrade as they not only watch but actually enjoy Soviet-style political education soapies. These were the tolerant havens of hardy grey, compassion-free, individuality-crushing, sceptics-murdering, by appointment-to- Stalinist Communism as it was meant to be. It’s where the people feel safe and unloved. No mafiso, no queueing up for discarded Western jeans, no Bill Gates.
Then there was that famous occasion – in the 70s I think – when Coca-Cola decided to come out with “New” Coca-Cola. Ten minutes after they announced this, their sales collapsed, fell right through the basement floor and took about a year to recuperate and stabilise. This frightening story is still relayed in business schools where it is known as the greatest single marketing fuck-up in history. That was until the New National Party came along.
Pik Botha should not waste his time saying that the National Party will disappear at the next elections. The NNP will implode all on its own. What Pik should be doing is constructing a net to catch all the fallout. The same as happened to Coca-Cola, as is happening to glastnost, will happen here. If Pik Botha announced the startup of the “ONP” he’d find himself inundated with impassioned offers of help. All those hundreds of thousands of surly “packaged off” civil servants, retired generals, police colonels.
Even a few of his old cabinet colleagues. As the M&G pointed out last week, they haven’t all fled to Switzerland. And surely Pietie du Plessis is out of jail by now. He’d enjoy another few swipes at the fiscal trough. The fact that’s he got a criminal record doesn’t matter any more. Lots of people in the current South African political hierarchy have spent major portions of their lives in jail.
There is a great big wodge of South African voters who would happily put their crosses against Pik Botha’s likeness on the ballot sheets. Where the Freedom Front and the rest of the Volkstaat proponents miss the point is in believing that the primary need for the survival of their doctrinal nursling is its implantation in a stretch of territory securely fenced off from the rest. In such a geographic crucible the ideals of the Freedom Fronts may well function undisturbed, but it won’t be too long before they wither and die. In order to flourish ideals need constant jostling and bruising. And anyway, the actual Volkstaat territory has always been more of the mind than anywhere else.
This is where Pik needs to dip his ladle. He will be surprised how deep it sinks.