Throwing punches: Action Congress for Transformation leader Ace Magashule. Photo: Mulungisi Louw/Getty Images
Channelling his inner Dricus du Plessis, axed ANC secretary general Ace Magashule looks primed to pummel all counter-revolutionaries refusing to accept T-shirts from his new political stokvel, Action Congress for Transformation (ACT).
To recap, on Monday — hours after Du Plessis became the first South African to be crowned the king of the United States-based Ultimate Fight Championship (UFC), the largest mixed martial arts promotions company in the world — Free State police spokesperson Captain Stephen Thakeng said a case of common assault was opened against a “well-known politician”.
It emerged that the politician in question was the budding UFC champion Magashule, whose spokesperson Rankanile Mosindo told The Star that his prized fighter defended himself against an “attack” on Saturday evening.
Allegations are that Magashule and his ACT blood brothers were handing out the stokvel’s T-shirts in Virginia in the Free State when a resident did not take kindly to being offered the party’s merchandise.
“The man threw [the shirt] back at them inside the car, then it covered the face of this well-known politician. Then [the politician] alighted the vehicle accompanied by his body-guards to allegedly assault the complainant,” said Thakeng.
He added that the alleged victim sustained injuries to his face akin to the battered and bruised images of UFC athletes emerging out of the caged octagon after a brutal bout.
I posit that Magashule’s overtures into blood sports — as part of his strategy to bully votes out of unsuspecting voters ahead of this year’s provincial and national elections — formed part of the realisation that his political career has fallen harder than a boxer’s head hitting the canvas from a knockout punch.
Until recently, Magashule was an undisputed political heavyweight, who ran the ring as the ANC’s Free State head honcho with pugilistic precision from 1992 until he moved up weight classes and elected secretary general, the governing party’s engine room, at its December 2017 national conference.
After all, the ACT leader — who launched his party in August after being booted out of his former political stable two months earlier — once declared that he would dethrone Cyril Ramaphosa after the latter’s election as ANC president at the same conference that elected Magashule secretary general.
Addressing a political rally during the ANC’s 106-year anniversary celebrations in January 2018 in Pietermaritzburg, Magashule implored those in attendance to be patient and wait “five years” before the party’s real leaders would return to the helm.
“Stay focused; the ANC we know will come back. It’s just a matter of five years; it’s a matter of five years. It’s a matter of five years, comrades. Conferences happen after each and every five years,” charged Magashule.
As it turned out, the underdog that was Ramaphosa was Rocky Balboa-esque in his repudiation of Magashule, running him out of the ANC in the same five-year period Magashule had threatened.
Nothing accentuated his fall from grace more than Magashule trotting out disgraced former Hawks boss Berning Ntlemeza as one of the ACT’s main attackers during the party’s August launch.
Showing off his trademark missing tooth and resembling a clobbered combatant, Ntlemeza said he formed a tag team with Magashule because of the “injustice” the ACT leader was subjected to.
The fired Hawks boss was alluding to the raft of corruption and fraud charges Magashule faces in the Bloemfontein high court related to an allegedly graft-riddled R255 million tender to eradicate asbestos roofs in Free State when he was the Free State’s premier.
“When I see injustice as the former head of the Hawks, I cannot just sit down — I must join as myself, so the country’s people have peace,” Ntlemeza proudly said, with Survivor’s classic song Eye of the Tiger playing in his head.
“I was heading the Hawks, and during my time, I did not receive any complaints about Ace Magashule, and then I went to pension, and when I checked and read and saw Ace Magashule going to court, Jacob Zuma going to court and jail, I said ‘no, man.’”
Pensioner Ntlemeza coming out of retirement has about as much of a chance to help the ACT become victorious at the polls as former champion boxer Dingaan Thobela returning to the ring overweight and aged 40 in 2006, two years after losing six fights in a row, thinking he could rule the world again.
One thing is clear; Magashule will pull no punches in trying to get votes this year, even from people not partial to his party’s regalia.