Two apparently unrelated pieces of news came up last week. In one of these, much was being made about the extravagant parties and celebrations that have become a regular feature of political life these days.
That dependable referee of administrative foul play, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), has recently been vocal about the fact that every month its organisation receives literally dozens of invitations to various bashes, parties and celebratory bun-fights. All of which are mounted by political bodies of one kind or another.
In the tripartite alliance, Cosatu’s cynicism has been invaluable. Unlike its comrades-in-arms-struggle, the African National Congress, Cosatu has managed to keep at least a visible percentage of its socialist principles intact.
An example of what Cosatu was complaining about was that, the day after his State of the Nation address, President Thabo Mbeki threw a celebratory lunch-time banquet for no less than 1 500 guests. Mbeki enjoys his parties almost much as he enjoys promenading on red carpets.
Only God and the auditor general know how many millions have actually been spent on inaugurating and re-inaugurating our president. Was it R80-million they owned to last time? An extraordinarily high fee for transforming a socialist into a socialite.
Anyone looking in on today’s South African media would not be far wrong in concluding that the adoration of the country’s president is written into the Constitution. It’s certainly engraved on to the charter of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). Daily on SABC3, there’s a programme, masquerading as a news bulletin but which, in fact, is a fusion of an emaciated soapie and a baleful sitcom. Written, directed and presented by industrial-strength flatterers, it’s called The News at Seven; but many people now refer to it as The Thabo Mbeki Half Hour.
With this ‘news” programme, the SABC’s daily and slavish diarising of every thought, move and peristaltic twitch of the president’s day, we are led right to the heart of what Cosatu — and many others — are grieving about. It is the bedevilling vanity, the unhealthy self-esteem among our politicians, which has resulted in their thinking they are a breed superior to ordinary people. With his insistence on being seen and heard — and celebrated — Mbeki has set the tone that is being aped by all around him.
The ANC is, ostensibly, a political party founded on and faithful to egalitarian principles. You’d never think so when you look at the ANC at work and at play. As someone said: talk about baubles, bangles and BMWs.
It’s steadily getting worse. How much public money goes into the flamboyant opening of Parliament ceremonies? This embarrassing replication of Westminster traditions and rituals was bad enough when Verwoerd, Vorster et al were saluting the mace. Now it borders on the ridiculous.
The occasion has become more a lumpen fashion parade than anything else. It’s now even more ludicrous than when, in apartheid’s ragtime period, PW Botha and Elize used to swan around, waving at their hairy fan club from an open car. What does all this poncing cost us? Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s ‘rustle of spring” hat alone must have cost a grand or so. Taste that abysmal doesn’t come cheap.
The other news item was the announcement that both Gauteng and the Western Cape provincial governments are planning to introduce an extra tax on fuel. These funds — again ostensibly — will be disposed to help build houses for the poor, and for distribution to other worthy causes.
This unpleasant news was issued by Ebrahim Rasool, Premier of the Western Cape. He announced that two new taxes were ‘in the pipeline”: a ‘development levy” and a ‘hospitality levy”. What an unfortunate choice of terms. Does this latter mean motor-borne visitors, to either of these provinces, are to be charged for using the roads? Or does it really mean that the ANC has at last decided that someone else must bear the costs of all its revelries. Now is the time for all good motorists to come to the aid of the party?
One thing you have to say about our politicians, they don’t scrimp when it comes to self-maintenance. The former president of Namibia, Sam Nujoma, retires next month, with his president’s salary intact, a retirement bonus of a year of it — nearly half a million Namibian dollars — paid up front in cash.
He gets free accommodation, in perpetuity, in his mini-palace (which cost a mere R54-million to build), three cars, 30 servants and two personal praise-singers, all funded by the taxpayers. Will poor Sam be able to do without the 20-car motorcade in which he regularly used to sweep through Windhoek at high speed to show how momentous he was?
Is all this lavish spending on themselves, this ostentation, nothing much more than proof of some sort of narcissism in our politicians? Or is it what the doyenne author Doris Lessing diagnosed in a BBC HardTalk interview last week?
She put presidents Mbeki and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe (and Nujoma by inference), in the same pot. They are essentially ‘weak men”, she said. They desperately need all the pomp and ceremony, all the fawning and adulation to convince themselves they aren’t.