TheTroublemakerTimes

 

For Tony Leon, Helen Suzman, F. Van Zyl Slabbert

With elections fast approaching in South Africa, and the tremendously shocking events of the past few weeks, with the NPA dropping charges, this little bog has had a lot of visitors to “Zille Watch”, a relatively light hearted approach to the DA policy for our rainbow nation.

Zille Watch was not really calculated, it just, sort of, happened. It was a result of an article I wrote called koeksusters for africa or zille’s unbearable lightness of being, which was immensely popular with my readership, small as it was then, for this site is only 3 months old, and was then only days into its existence.

Zille Watch was going to be a short set of pieces, perhaps 2 or 3, but it grew into something much bigger. Today you will find links to it on serious sites, like The Freedom of Expression Institute as well as various USA sites. It remains perennially popular. Some readers just read that, regularly.

The curious thing is, it was written, not about Helen Zille, so much as Tony Leon. I wanted to illustrate, how, the very intelligent, and careful politics of our official opposition under Mr Tony Leon, had been hijacked by, what I was to end up calling, Helen Zille’s politics of idiocy.

Who knew she would give me so much ammunition ?

Today the DA of old, the natural inheritor of Leon, Van Zyl Slabbert, and the late, great Helen Suzman, lies in tatters. The new DA, with its personality cult of Zille, is in deed a different animal.

It has always been my contention, that this decision to turn the DA into a focus group, tres-Hollywood road show, with a botoxed up, singing, dancing sideshow chimp like Super Silly Zille would cost them dearly in the upcoming elections.

Time will soon tell.

Many old DA stalwarts, and supporters, some of them, my friends have been excluded from the DA’s new face, which has 18 year olds on the ballot, and dim witted, farcical sycophants like Lindiwe Mazibuko, who recently told us “Helen Zille is the Bomb.”

I too, have taken an unfair swipe at David Unterhalter,long time intellectual capital behind the DA (Calling him, her side kick) I apologise for that now.I assumed he was part of that crazy band wagon of Zille madness. I have changed my mind. I have been listening very carefully to Mr. Unterhalter recently, and I have to say, he sounds like the old DA. The DA of Slabbert and Suzman. He is reasoned, careful, extremely intelligent, well presented and a very formidable debater and political thinker. He is certainly nobody’s sidekick, least of all our very own tin lady. It must be hard for him, to watch those years of work trampled on by Bullish Zille and her posse of teenagers. And i mean years, for Mr Unterhlater SC has been a serious, driving, intellectual warrior for the old DA , since my first encounter with him, personally, over 1o years ago. He upset me then, I was young, who knew that the madness of his night would visit me in mine?I’m sorry David. We can have better dialogue now.I never dreamed that I would one day miss people like  you in the opposition.

Who knew ? 

Which begs the question ?

Why is he not leader of the official opposition?

I may not agree with him, but I can respect him, and too, I could vote for him, if only as a vote of check, to keep a strong opposition, which we so desperately need.

The wholesale chucking out of the staple of our old DA, intellectualism, for this new pop culture poppie-cum-Marvel-superhero from Cape Town is astonishing. 

It’s justified by the DA on Helen’s performance as mayor of Cape Town. Cape Town, with its very Eurocentric white population, and pseudo Rivera society is a far cry from the rest of South Africa. They love her there.

She sticks in the throats of  many other South Africans, around the country.

If, becoming a multi racial party was the intention, why pick a Maggie Thacheresque woman, who flourishes only when she is baring her teeth, who looks about as at home with black people, in her many staged photo ops, as a gravy covered cat in a barn yard full of hound dogs?

A friend of mine, told me the other day, with sadness written deeply over his visage, after having been a pinnacle force for the DA/PFP etc with his own international acclaim for decades,  “ I tried to reason with Helen , about why this was bad, so much so, that she no longer talks to me. It’s something of a disaster. I will vote DA again, whom else can I vote for. But it’s very sad.”

Too true my friend.

My opponents within DA ranks tell me that this move has been highly researched, and that the new DA is backed by serious think tank type research and investigation.

Really ?

It’s true too. They are.

But I fear they have made a serious miscalculation.

The focus group, their mainstay, is notoriously fickle. To have promised them the country, in a “Vote to Win” campaign, ignoring the possibility that Zuma may not face trial, was a huge, stupid gamble. One they could not hope to win.

All that is left is despondency for your voter now.

Even before he votes, he has lost, and he knows it.

I remember Lindiwe Mazibuku’s words some time back, while she was enthusing about her Bomb, Helen Zille, (In our Daily News Tues 17 Feb) where she castigated Tony Leon, for his “obsession” with struggle politics, while she lauded Dippy Dim Wit Zille for her downgraded politics of insanity, that appealed to her childish mind. This from the DA’s very own media officer..

She too, giggled and gushed, at Mr. Leon’s expense, how her new found, brand new Zille DA meant that ““…this means that a …relative nobody like me can run for election alongside party stalwarts…with my skill set, like their experience.”

My mind boggled then. The sheer absurd, and titanic cheek. The audacity of that statement. The damn, self indulgent ignorance of it. The self serving precociousness. The massive, deep lack of political savvy. The very ugly stupidity, and the terrible consequences that it invited, in it’s wake of damn foolishness.

Helen endorsed this with her silence and continued support for her child protege and alienating cock up, Lindiwe.

Perhaps because she is black.

Who cares ?

It was a terrible indictment.

For real heros of democracy, like Leon, to  suffer such indignity, at the hands of such impunity .

It smarted. Dammit man, this is serious stuff. Why, dear God, why was the very tender art of opposition politics, which keeps us from the edge of the abyss, left to amateurish, moronic baboons like Lindiwe and Zille ?

Whom shall we blame in the aftermath ?

Helen, Helen Zille !!!

Thats who.

And all the power hungry, realpolitik twits who voted her in as DA honcho !!

Damn them, and their grandiose vision, riding on the back of coalition compromise and reactionary realpolitik.

Theirs is an inheritance of shame.

Their euro-cape-insanity may cost us our dearly needed, deeply loved, true opposition, at the hands of greedy, power hungry dimwits.

What a price to pay?

The elections are almost here. Helen Zille is campaigning for Mayor and Official Opposition.

Perhaps the DA will lose both.

Sad.

I say sad, because the grim realities of politics in South Africa leave only 2 options for opposition parties, currently, you can either be the clever vote, that votes for democracy, that votes for effective opposition,and you sell that with intellectual savvy, and a platform of morality, and even custodianship of the democracy.

You sell it, dear reader, like Tony Leon, Van Zyl Slabbert, and Helen Suzeman, with righteousness, deeply held conviction, intellect and the very considered politics of freedom. You sell it as leaders of thought, holders of the duty of democracy. You sell it, just like they did with clever response, and ideas. And you end up with the opposition bowing its knee to your clever, moral, and intelligent crusade for that one thing we all need, democracy. You don’t even need to sell it, for the kind of stuff they used to sell in SA opposition politics before Chimp, chump, the botoxed monkey from Cape Town Zille arrived, sells itself.

Or you can be the vote for reactionary politics.

And you sell that one, with the politics of aggression, you play on the fears of your electorate and not your ideas, you convince the electorate that a vote for the opposition is a vote for the end of life itself. You sing and dance, you say reactionary stuff, and you make promises that you cannot fulfill. You focus your voters on destroying the enemy.

You play realpolitik, which you set to theme tune. You run around, like a Hollywood celebrity wannabe, and you sing tit for tat songs, to show the “Blacks” that you can be like JZ. All the while you growl about the other. The evil other. You try and paint yourself with home made , messianic body paint.

You tell the world that you can stem the tide of the evil machinations of the devil that you oppose. You cry foul. You cry anything. Just so long as you oppose. And you botox yourself up,  get a wardrobe consultant, and you spit hatred, fear and foolishness in the faces of you opponents. You talk about “truth” and you  thump your theme, day and night, from court room to dining room, and taxi rank to township, and all the while you keep your private paparazzi on hand… to rewrite reality for power’s sake.

And you hope to hell, that they don’t see through your botox veil.

Under Mr Leon, the first was true.

Under Zille, it’s so obviously the 2^nd, no?

The DA backed the wrong horse.

Time will soon tell.

In any event, TheTroublemakerTimes sheds a tear, and has a moment of silence, for the greatness that has gone before, soon to be erased by you know who.

Sies man.

 

Click on the picture to go to Zille Watch