Sisulu set on a magical mystery tour to the presidency

When your move, as a supposed strategist, is plain, predictable and can easily be countered, then you’re no strategist. And sadly, such is our politics today. We must all be bored out of our bones.

Let’s think this through. President Cyril Ramaphosa is, we are told, in a political fix and the country expects him to act against his tourism minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, who, through a series of public statements, has managed to say that not only is the judiciary led by Uncle Toms, but the presidency is manned by communicators who lie through their teeth. Well, that’s the charitable version.

If Sisulu’s messaging is looked at from a different perspective, we must understand that these presidential communicators aren’t the real liars, they mask the lies coming from the president who wilfully misrepresented the outcome of a meeting he had with a subordinate. If this is taken to its logical conclusion, it makes the president a scheming, lying, manipulative wimp who should not be at the Union Buildings.

If we believe Sisulu, we must be left to wonder if Ramaphosa’s communicators sent out the message without his approval and, if so, to also believe that the man is truly not in charge of anything, including the small unit that must communicate on his behalf. But their lying, conniving ways stop with Sisulu, we must believe. It’s end-of-the-world stuff — and I am not even sarcastic!

Meanwhile, the presidency’s communicators insist that Sisulu apologised and we are left with an insinuation that she’s backtracking because she doesn’t want to look weak before her supporters in a year she must be possessed of the courage to claim the throne.

The strategy behind all of this, meanwhile, is that Sisulu is trying to force Ramaphosa to fire her and thus make her a political victim which, in ANC terms, will make her invincible. You know how the Marikana miners were told by sangomas that police bullets would magically become water when they’re shot at? Yes, this is what strategy, in our politics, has come to. The “thinking” in the ANC is that ever since former president Jacob Zuma milked his victimhood all the way to the Union Buildings, there is no other way of getting to the seat of power. This is the intelligible, high-drawer stuff. Sisulu must do whatever it takes to get the president to fire her and, voila, her path to Mahlamba Ndlopfu is wide open. That simple.

To add more mystery, the president is too afraid to act against any belligerence because, the strategy reader that he is, he doesn’t want to fuel opponents’ election campaigns by making them victims. What it means is that the president will do nothing to reprimand people who should be reprimanded. We will then have Date My Family-type awkwardness. The president will be described by all and sundry as weak, prioritising his ANC battle “strategy” and therefore coming across as, erm, an Uncle Tom of the Stellenbosch Mafia. Those who oppose him are then considered radical proponents of change.

But, in all seriousness, the fact that one move has worked for Zuma does not necessarily mean it will work for everyone who comes after him. Zuma may not have seen the inside of a classroom for longer than an average 15-year-old, but his strategy was not the cut-and-paste nonsense of today’s politics. He put together a coalition of the wounded, dismissed as too disjointed to mount and sustain a serious battle. He had workers’ support, the ANC’s youth and the communists. He tailored his message to each constituency, promising contradictory outcomes should he win. The Left actually believed SA was suddenly going to become a socialist country under Zuma.

The truth is that the spectacle between the president and his ambitious minister is not only unseemly, it is a distraction. We must be relieved we no longer have the coronavirus to be too worried about. This is why other politicians, in their endeavour to find resonance with electorates, have decided to conduct inspections in the hospitality sector. What it means is that our attention, as a country, is slowly moving back to what we ought not to have moved away from — the economy.

And that is the conversation we don’t want to have. It’s a conversation that requires us to think. You would also think that if Sisulu wants to be president, as is plain to all, she would focus her strategy not on simply getting fired and becoming a victim but on how to untangle our country from the shackles of poverty and inequality.

When the president announces that she has apologised, you’d think she would not merely tell us she did not, but use the opportunity to show us the research that underpins her insults. Yeah, there possibly are some Uncle Toms in the judiciary, as there are in many sectors of our economy, but where is the research? Must we guess? If you want to be pejorative but factual, hey, you’ve earned it.

If a judge, or any leader, betrays their calling, they deserve to be told off, just like anyone in politics who thinks it’s OK to try to become our leader by relying on the used-up methods of a guy who was running away from his crimes.

What is incredibly sad is that even people without demonstrable support, using a cut-and-paste “strategy” and relying on a tapestry of lies about judges, have the temerity to make an attempt at leading all of us. It is that easy. The standard is that low. No wonder we have no solutions to more complex issues involving our economy.

Ramaphosa must do what presidents ought to do in such situations: fire Sisulu and demonstrate to the rest of the ANC that being a victim may have worked for the Nkandla crooner but will not work for everyone. In so doing, he might save the ANC from self-created chaos, with hundreds of members trying to be political victims in ANC branches and provinces.

Ramaphosa must demonstrate that being a victim may have worked for the Nkandla crooner but will not work for everyone