These Democratic Alliance (DA) pussies really need to pull themselves towards themselves. The outcry over Jacob Zuma’s witty and trenchant comparison between the African National Congress (ANC) and Christianity is just further proof that, whereas JZ is indeed a man of the people, the DA is the party of poopers.
What is the DA complaining about? That Jacob Zuma’s rhetoric is spot on for his supporters? Or can it really be that the party of the intellectual approach is complaining because its unlettered antagonist is comparing one societal construct with another? Or, heaven forbid (ha), is Helen Zille’s mob actually complaining because it believes there’s a difference between JC’s snowjob and JZ’s con job?
Give me a break — President Zuma is absolutely accurate in his metaphor. The ANC appears to operate exactly the way organised Christianity does. As with Christianity, it’s who you know that advances you in the political arena. If you haven’t personally welcomed Jesus into your life, or JZ into your business, you have no chance of getting to heaven, or that Great Tender in the Sky as it’s known locally.
As with Catholicism, which I believe is still a version of Christianity, the ANC has a holy old fossil it drags out every now and then when it needs to score points with an unruly congregation complaining about how long paradise, or low-cost housing in our case, is taking to arrive.
Encouraging similarity
And just like Christianity, the ANC also promises that the meek shall inherit the earth, and yet leaves its believers dirt poor. Well, except in the spiritual sense I suppose. And an encouraging similarity is that both Christianity and the ANC do good despite themselves, mostly thanks to the unsung, selfless, ordinary heroics of men and women who spend their time in the trenches, rather than trying to find out how many BMWs you can fit into the garage of a pinhead politician.
The presidential hotline (or the City of Jo’burg helpline, for that matter) is very much like prayer — a hopeless plea addressed into a gaping void, where the only thing that sustains you is the belief that one day, somehow, there’ll be a miracle and God will actually answer the phone.
Christianity (and Islam and Judaism, of course) exists precisely to maintain the status quo by the use of threats and coercion, but also, more benignly, by the harnessing of people to a greater cause that can, although not always, benefit humanity as a whole. Exactly what the ANC is for, of course, and as with Christianity, we need to deal with some uncomfortable anomalies, such as gods who kill children to further the cause of their sect or soccer club, and institutionalised corruption and nepotism. Just as the Christian God handed over the reins of power to his son, so do Jacob Zuma’s children benefit from his connections.
I guess if Jacob Zuma and the ANC are Jesus and Christianity respectively, then Helen Zille and the DA are Lucifer and Satanism. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a convincing reason why I might vote DA. At last, a party that honestly embraces evil, rather than just sucking at Mammon’s sushi-smelling teat behind closed Polokwane doors.
Riding the winged gravy train
If I was an adherent of Islam or Judaism, I’d also have to vote DA — after all, what self-respecting Jew or Muslim wants to vote ANC and end up in a heaven with smug ANC politicians riding the winged gravy train around and around the celestial trough while chanting, “told you so, told you so”?
Even the terminally retarded conservatives of the African Christian Democratic Party have objected to President St Jacob Zuma’s conflation of the ANC with Christianity, which is a bit rich considering that their entire election manifesto is, basically, vote for us because Jesus wants you to kill people and gays. (Kidding! I’m sure they have some tithed and tested economic policies as well.)
No, I’m with St Jake of Nkandla on this one. A vote for the ANC is a vote for Jesus. Of course, you might want to think about whether you really want a system of government based on the oldest dictatorship allegedly known to man, where the punishment for not toeing the party line is consignment to burning hell, and where your only recourse to justice is to throw yourself on the arbitrary mercy of some old dude who believes he can do no wrong.
Leave God out of it, Zuma. Read Verashni Pillay’s take on the matter as a Christian.
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