DA’s Helen Zille and Tony Leon at the first sitting of the seventh Parliament. Picture: Henk Kruger / Independent Newspapers
It has been a little over 60 days since the May 2024 elections and South Africa is in the middle of a coup d’état.
The ANC appears to have given up all desire to govern, relishing rather in talk shops and the relief that some of its cadres still have jobs.
After 30 years of obfuscation, it is an exhausted and obese dinosaur. Having lost all sense of mission, it is no longer in control of the South African narrative.
The DA has taken full control of the political narrative. They began by determining how the ANC should select other GNU partners. They stated explicitly that the President’s Sona speech was based on their manifesto.
The voices that dominate the media are those of Helen Zille, Leon Schreiber and people like Geordin Hill-Lewis. Add into the fray Gayton Mackenzie.
ANC secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, is a kindergarten cop compared to the media-savvy Zille. All he does is warn and protest, but he cannot match the energy with which the DA communication teams are dictating the current narrative.
Two comments by Zille surfaced this week yet to be adequately responded to by the ANC. The first is that there is no GNU and that the ANC is in a coalition with the DA.
The second, from August 2023, is that she will personally see the demise of the ANC in her lifetime. Schreiber is turning Home Affairs right side up.
For many who have suffered historical race discrimination, there is an obvious trigger when the minister gives commentary on what he thinks is best, knowing how quickly politically black people might again become the lesser served, for the sake of the markets.
Mackenzie, shooting from the hip as always, is introducing dangerous nuances, using scepticism to trump facts, and loudness to trump diplomacy. GNU ministers are making statements that are taking narrative control away from the ANC, completing the coup.
On the wings of this DA coup is the MK Party, licking its lips to absorb the castrated ANC and humiliated EFF, as part of its preparations for the 2029 general election.
The ANC is a skeleton of what it was. Destroyed by Ramaphosa’s love for selfish capitalism, where wealth is an elitist right and poverty is only tipped with charity, it no longer holds the compass for our future.
The ANC NEC in 2027 will become a memorial service to a once great movement. With Mbalula, Panyaza Lesufi and Oscar Mabuyane currently being the whispered favourites, the ANC should prepare for the worst.
The DA is not waiting on the Local Government Elections of 2026, the ANC NEC of 2027, or the 2029 General Elections to assume power. It is busy right now taking control of government business.
Having sensed the utter weakness of the ANC, it is offering a battered electorate, tired of the drama, antics and failed promises of the ANC, an efficient government.
The tired electorate wants jobs and food, not political theatre. On both theatre and efficiency, Mbalula is simply no match for Zille. DA ministers are determined to introduce key DA manifesto points as policy issues in their departments, to show the “better DA alternative”.
I was at a funeral service in Manenberg last week, where the inspiring Rev Ronald Muller spoke about hope. I saw an exhausted community; 30 years of exhaustion and betrayed by a party many once trusted. A tired people accepting a coup, willingly so. It is a most dangerous time in our democracy.
* Lorenzo A. Davids.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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