‘He looks like a potato,” said a six-year-old of my acquaintance, speaking of the ANC’s election posters featuring the smiling head-and-shoulders of Jacob Zuma.
And how right the six-year-old was. Zuma’s cheery song-and-dance routines may have appealed to the bulk of the electorate, and some may find his Big Daddy weightiness attractive in a traditional sort of way, but if he was the face of the ANC’s campaign in the general elections in April, I’d have thought that he was a better advertisement for starchy vegetables than for a healthy low-carb, low-fat republic.
Hence it has been a great pleasure to see, as I drive to and from work in Johannesburg’s central-northern suburbs, the Democratic Alliance’s posters for what the ANC is calling, on its own posters, a ”bi-election” in Ward 90. Standing for the DA is one Gordon Mackay, who is young and good-looking in that preppy manner — and when I say ”young” I mean that he barely looks old enough to vote, let alone become an elected official in our city’s government.
If that’s what he’s standing for. I am a little unclear on how the ward system works, or what Mackay will become if (when?) he wins election for Ward 90. A councillor? Let’s hope so. And I’m unclear as to why we’re having an election in Ward 90. Did someone die? Resign? Perhaps — no! — someone was actually fired.
Whatever the case, and whoever is now out of office, one is tempted to employ Dorothy Parker’s famous mot on the death of President Calvin Coolidge: ”How can they tell?” I certainly didn’t see anything in the national papers. Perhaps the Rosebank & Killarney Gazette notified its readers of such developments, but then it’s very hard to find any actual content in the Gazette, fossick though one might through the thickets of catalogues for large superstores selling everything from tins of beans to laptops. I tend to get distracted by the pictures of all those lovely computers and wonder who, besides elected officials, can afford them.
I daresay a good journalist would contact the relevant bodies to find out what’s actually going on and who’s who in this little, er, bi-way of South African electoral politics.
But who or what provides that information? The city? The municipality? The DA itself, probably, but the last time I saw the DA campaigning outside my local Spar I gave them a wide berth.
They feel a bit like Jehovah’s Witnesses to me, sympathetic though I am to Helen Zille’s brand of self-righteous white-madam politics.
That’s the only role available for white people in South African politics today, unless you assume the Alec Erwin position and have a special tripartite-alliance bolt installed though your brain.
I should, perhaps, have made an appointment to meet Mackay to find out what he stands for, if anything besides youth, good looks and open-neck collared shirts. I’d still be interested to meet him; perhaps we could organise an early-evening date? Coffee? A drink?
But it seems I’m not in the relevant ward. The Mackay posters, which (to my delight) festoon every pole for miles around, stop dead a few streets short of my house.
At least we have an election for someone good-looking. Mackay must surely win this one; his opponent, the ANC’s Stan Etkind, no doubt long retired until this ”bi-election”, looks like one of those altekakkers I see at the gym, shuffling along so effortfully that you want to stop them before they try to do any exercise.
So Mackay is a breath of fresh air. Even after all that national-election huffery and puffery, the ruling party’s new Cabinet features only one sexy person, Ebrahim Patel, and he’s a former unionist who looks like he can barely crack a smile. All the other good-looking people in the ANC have gone into private enterprise.
I write this on July 8, the day I’d be voting if I lived in Ward 90. I’d have liked to give Mackay my endorsement, if only for being cute. But I am comforted by the fact that, last night, I saw a DA poster lying on the pavement and I grabbed it and took it home.
Now I can keep the thrill of electoral good looks alive for a little longer. Mackay may have a hole in his temple where he used to be tied to a pole, but no matter. He’ll do.
Postscript: I owe the Rosebank & Killarney Gazette an apology: two days after writing this piece, I came across their edition with Mackay and Etkind on the cover, detailing their respective policies. Unlike so many other editions of the Gazette, it had not been jammed into my postbox. I note that Mackay won the election with 92,6% of the vote. I’m still awaiting a drinks invitation, Gordon.