/ 21 February 2009

Evita grills Durban boss

Mike Sutcliffe and Evita. Photo: Rogan Ward
Mike Sutcliffe and Evita. Photo: Rogan Ward

Mike Sutcliffe, the eThekwini municipal manager figured it was the ”Dildo from Darling versus the Dictator from Durban”.

The audience watching Sutcliffe as a guest on Pieter Dirk Uys’s Elections and Erections at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre this week agreed with his self-characterisation. But they apparently wanted to add: ”The Dick from Durban.”

Boos followed the often-criticised municipal tsar on to the stage and his attempts at repartee with Uys’s alter-ego, Evita Bezhuidenhout, were met, in the main, with derision.

People greeted his ”three years left in the job” with an ironic ”Aaaw!”

On Wednesday night, at times, the theatre felt like full house at the Circus Maximus.

Those gathered appeared disaffected by Sutcliffe’s partisan myopia. And more mundanely, they were pissed off at traffic jams created by perpetually dysfunctional robots on streets with names they no longer recognised.

They wanted the catharsis of a collective thumbs-down and a torrent of comedic savagery.

They got Evita’s mincing lion toying deliciously with her dinner, a self-styled ”Marxist geographer”.

What about the spray-painting of new road signs in a divisive project which has seen 100 road names — including benign ones like Ridge Road (now Peter Mokaba Ridge Road) — changed?

”It was a plot by the city,” Sutcliffe offered with lame irony. ”We knew the signs would be vandalised with black spray-paint and that every time whites drove down those roads they would see the black paint and be reminded of black majority rule.”

He was swiftly handbagged in the crotch by Tannie Evita: ”Surely it’s not black majority rule — just majority rule, with lots of black and bits of white and bits of brown and other colours?” she countered.

Sometimes the throwaway comments resonated with complaints about ANC rule in eThekwini: ”Oof, you’re so unpopular,” observed Evita, ”do you enjoy all the people hissing and jeering?”

”No, I don’t notice it. I’m deaf,” responded Sutcliffe, the red creeping up his face and on to his balding head.

A clever, obdurate man, prone to condescension, Sutcliffe was admittedly game. He attempted his own broadsides, aimed especially at the predominately white audience.

His message to South African voters in the lead-up to the elections: ”Firstly, as South Africans you must vote. Secondly, be informed about your vote.

”The problem here in Durban, as in other parts of the country, is that people make uninformed, silly decisions. They don’t think about issues and they don’t look at issues.” More jeers followed.

Elections and Erections crystallised one important fact: while South Africans should tell themselves ”Yes, We Can!” they should also remember to tell the politicians ”No, You Can’t!”

Sutcliffe was the first of several politicians in Durban who will appear on the show over the next week, including the Inkatha Freedom Party’s chairperson and KwaZulu-Natal premier candidate, Zanele Magwaza-Msibi.

Minority Front leader Amichand Rajbansi, true to form, appeared to double-cross the bridge to Elections and Erections. Initially, he was unequivocal about not participating, but then changed his mind.

The show moves to Johannesburg in March and Cape Town in April.