‘In a relationship, it’s better to be the leaver than the leavee. Because the leaver leaves. But the leavee is left.” — Woody Allen in Everyone Says I Love You.
And what are we left with? The leaver and the leavee trying to outdo each other with divorce gags.
That damn divorce metaphor, they’re stretching it thin. Thin as a hair. Thin as phyllo. Thin as I’m stretching this ”thin as” thing.
It started with Mosiuoa Lekota ”serving divorce papers”.
Mathews Phosa had a quick comeback: the marriage has not ”irretrievably broken down”. The gathered delegates yuk it up. (As they must.)
Weeks later, slower with the comeback, but not wanting to be left out, King Henry VIII over at the ANC accuses Shikota of political ”bigamy”, which is presumably an insult because anybody who stops short of full-blown polygamy is a candy-ass.
And they’re probably not done milking it either.
Expect to hear in coming weeks that they’re dividing up the CD collection and later that the children have been sent for counselling. (In the ANC Youth League’s case counselling isn’t a bad idea. Julius Malema definitely needs a hug.)
Personality politics is so painful to watch when politicians assume their personalities are anything other than unbearable.
Who came up with that term ”Shikota”? The Mail & Guardian, yes? That’s pretty funny.
Although it’s easy, when saying it fast in a slippery sentence, to accidentally transpose the ”k” and the ”t” (very unfortunate), or to confuse it with the Japanese mushroom (very tasty), it’s still catchy.
Perhaps the new party should’ve just gone with it as its official name. At least they could be sure nobody got there first.
Naming political organisations. Who would’ve thought it’d be such a problem?
First, you need to decide what kind of organisation you want to be. A ”party” perhaps?
”Party” is kinda old school and has been snubbed by pretty much any democratic-era organisation apart from the New National Party which wasn’t really that new and, besides, look at how it worked out for them. Forget calling yourself a party.
You could simply call yourself an ”organisation”. But surely you have to be organised to call yourself an organisation. Better not hold yourself to impossible standards.
”Alliance”, maybe? But we’ve learned our lesson from the Democratic Alliance — what if your alliance partner walks out on you, leaving you in an alliance with yourself? Even today the DA wears the stranded half-smile of the girl who never gets asked to dance.
How about calling it a ”front”? Too aggressive? Warlike? And probably inappropriate when you’ve walked out of your old party and people have seen less of your front and more of your back.
”Movement” is an option. Movements move. But so do bowels, so let’s avoid that.
Well, why not ”Congress”? Especially if you’ve been in a congress before. It’s grown-up-sounding. Bold. Oddly sexual. In a good way.
What kind of congress, though? That one’s easy. It’s a democratic congress. Or DC. But that doesn’t sound right. Too short. Too flat. Too electrical. Let’s try one of those syllabic abbreviations.
Deco? Too metrosexual.
Maybe just DEC? But that opens you up to a series of DEC jokes. (Say it aloud and you’ll get it.) Columnists are a cruel breed.
You need another adjective. Like ”African”. The other congress has ”African” in its name, why shouldn’t we? Make it Adec.
But wait. Haven’t we recently discovered that in this country we’re a bunch of xenophobes? Make it South African and, therefore, Sadec.
Call a press conference. Make the announcement — What’s that? Sadec is taken? No it isn’t, those guys are called Sadec-o, with an ”O”, which is completely different.
Still, let’s not fight about it. Drop the ”E”. Let’s be the SADC.
Of course, there’s already an SADC. And, when you say it, it could be misheard as SABC and who’d want to be mistaken for them?
Sigh — Sadeco sounds so good. It has that rhythmic, tri-syllabic thing going for it.
That’s where we should’ve started. We should’ve found the abbreviation then worked backwards. Let’s consider our options:
Sudoku? Um — Sub-committee of do-gooders who like kudu?
Okay, clearly this isn’t working. Maybe it doesn’t have to stand for anything. Maybe it can just sound cool.
Mufasa? I mean, he was the dad in The Lion King and who wouldn’t want to be voiced by James Earl Jones?
Pecomo? To get the Perry Como fans? There are more than you’d imagine.
Yokono? If she was good enough for John Lennon, she’s good enough for us.
Potato? You say po-tay-to, we say po-tah-to. It sounds more ethnic that way.
Bokomo? We’ll have a logo, brand presence and rusks to dunk in our tea.
Pasova? Guarantees us the Jewish vote.
Yomama? Although we should probably save that one for our youth league.
Yomofo? Too rude? Perhaps. And besides, the MF got there first.
Shikota. Let’s just call it Shikota.
Has anyone checked if the web address is available?