We’re breathing a sigh of relief that those pesky elections are over. Now we can head back to Sandton and leave the poor people to crap on their own dreams in the privacy of their open-air toilets. And at least we’ve achieved something — they now have nice, soft, leftover political pamphlets with which to wipe their arses. See you next time, poor people!
Life can return to what passes for normal. This doesn’t mean we’ll stop talking about politics, just that we can be even more randomly unreasonable about what we say. And, in true South African tradition, we love nothing more than a good argument about stuff we know almost nothing about.
At social political discussions my usual schtick is to vehemently attack the bleating Democratic Alliance acolytes with vitriol and vim.
They’re such soft targets, these clean-cut progeny of some unholy coupling between Ayn Rand and Tony Leon. The ANC apologists are also pretty easy to provoke. Try to gently point out the odd government cock-up and you might as well be dry-humping the plinth where Verwoerd’s statue once stood. Criticising service delivery is the ANC voter’s incest taboo.
So, when a DA voter proudly proclaimed, “I vote DA because we need a strong opposition party”, there was some shock when I replied: “Finally. A convincing reason to vote DA.” The reason to vote DA is not because we need strong opposition. It’s because if the DA was the ruling party its platitudinous supporters would have to stop lying about their devotion to a multiparty democracy and admit that they vote DA because they’re closet conservatives who think that the founding principle of democracy is “one man, one whine”.
As you can tell, I’m heartily sick of electioneering and the ugly dirty-tricks campaigns that parties embrace with such relish. As the parties emerge from the polls into the post-coital glow of a job well done and well paid, it behooves us to take note of where they’ve fucked us over.
We now know that many of our politicians are self-serving scum who are happy to deploy racial dissension, class hatred and gender abuse in the quest to deliver a better life for all. Or at least the “all” they now owe a favour. We now know that they have no qualms about working together to sow anger, hatred, prejudice and violence, as part of building a better community for all.
Most importantly, we can now confront the happy fact that politicians believe that we’re imbeciles who want to be lied to. There’s a reason that “Your vote is your secret” is a necessary mantra in South African elections. It’s because, no matter which party you vote for, there’s a certain shame attached.
Chris Roper is the editor of M&G Online. Follow him on
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