South Africa

South Africa

TRAINSPOTTER: Manifesto Up! The ANC gets election season off to an empty start

TRAINSPOTTER: Manifesto Up! The ANC gets election season off to an empty start

Election season has officially begun with the ANC manifesto launch, which occurred in an unimpressed stadium in the highly contested Nelson Mandela Bay municipality. It was a weird weekend for the governing party, and the Windy City howled with more than a hint of desperation. Zuma and his baggage, to say nothing of abject local mismanagement, could lose the ANC a vital municipality. But their awesome manifesto will solve everything, right? Not so much. By RICHARD POPLAK.

If you want an example of how little has changed since the ANC came to power 22 years ago, you can do no better than a visit to Port Elizabeth. Yup, there has been a political transition. But in Port Elizabeth, it has been entirely in service of preserving the town in a sort racist/classist amber. Drive through the city from the airport, and you’re traversing quiet streets without potholes, free of the trash and human beings that define, say, the Johannesburg experience. Nowhere else in the country can you wallow in PW Botha-era nostalgie de la boue with such awesome views of the ocean. And yet, there are other sides to Port Elizabeth: the townships, which remain free of what South Africans euphemistically term “service delivery”, but what most folks would likely call “the basics.” It explains the terms of the democratic dispensation as eloquently as possible: a small percentage of the residents live in a pristine diorama of the apartheid years, and the rest live in a filthy, violent diorama of the apartheid years, which ends as a perfect representation of—ta-da!—the apartheid years. Port Elizabeth is a great place to see the most unequal Gini coefficient in the world in action.

Ag, nothing ever changes in PE,” said my Airbnb owner, before telling me that her rusks were homemade.

Which, of course, makes Port Elizabeth the only joint worthy of hosting the ANC’s local election manifesto launch.

Some housekeeping: the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, which incorporates Port Elizabeth, the adjacent towns of Uitenhage and Despatch, along with the surrounding rural areas, has a population of over 1.3 million. It was one of colonialism’s ground zeroes: Bartholomeu Dias touched down in Algoa Bay back in 1488, while arch Voortrekker Piet Retief was from the area. In 1965, when the bosses began with the bulldozing, the city was transformed into the most superb spacial expression of apartheid anywhere in the country.

Then there was the other side: Steve Biko was tortured in the city before being driven to Pretoria, where he would later be declared dead. The Craddock Four were murdered here. MK struggle hero Vuyisile Mini got his start in the city. Govan Mbeki is buried here. Nelson Mandela was born in Mvezo in the Eastern Cape…anyway, you get the point. This site is historically majorly important.

At the turn of apartheid, was there anywhere in the country more loyal to the ANC? Unlikely. This extreme power did not translate into action: here, corruption isn’t a vague underlying feature of the landscape, it is the landscape. Twenty-nine senior ANC members have been removed from their posts, including six successive city managers, all seen off with a R10 million golden handshake. Mayors rotate with the wind, and considering Port Elizabeth is called the Windy City, that means a lot. Last year, star candidate Danny Jordaan was plugged into the executive position, to the enormous disgruntlement of the branches, the members of which didn’t appreciate an increasingly desperate Luthuli House parachuting in an outsider. Despite all the juggling, or because of it, the municipality is a mathematical mess: in 2009 the party lost 16 percent of the vote, dropping perilously close to the 50 percent mark. This time, they may lose it all to the dreaded ‘racists in blue’—a comedown that the divided, troubled governing party may not be able to withstand

And so, the ANC circus insinuated itself into apartheid Disneyland, filling busses, taxes, airplanes and, presumably, surfboards in order to launch their new election platform in a stadium that, they promised, would be filled with 110,000 screaming super-fans. As regards the fact that the Nelson Mandela Stadium has a capacity of 46,000?

Welcome to election season, friendos.

* * *

The first thing that strikes you upon encountering mayor Danny Jordaan is how utterly ANC brass he is. He’s smart, he wants to do the right thing—he knows what the right thing to do is—but he can’t do anything because the rot is so complete that doing anything is out of the question, and nor does he realise that his constant stream of bullshit is actually part of the rot, fertilizes it, nurtures it.

Jordaan, who moonlights as president of the South African Football Association, called a press conference the day before the manifesto launch. We learned that the issues facing Nelson Mandela Bay were facing candidates across the country—issues that somehow just happen to the ANC, and are totally dissociated from the fact that they have for the past two decades represented the majority in government. The issues, Jordaan seemed to suggest, are like an itch on a phantom limb. “Lot of sound, no substance,” he said. “So don’t expect me to make sound.” He wanted us to know that the government had to create more jobs, and he referred to the city’s waterfront development project, which he deferred to Minister of Public Enterprises Lynne Brown. “The ANC can’t lose the metro,” he continued. “It can only lose to itself.” He promised inclusive and transparent tender processes, reminding us that corruption “is an international problem.”

Considering that PE was basically awash in ANC colours, and that a whole bunch of quick fixes were currently being instituted across the metro, did this not constitute metro money being used to campaign for the ANC? But in a Roman Catholic Church, would you not see Roman Catholic iconography, asked Jordaan in turn. I’m not paraphrasing—he actually said exactly that.

It’s not a simple question of ethics and morality,” he added.

That sound you hear is every ancient Athenian philosopher slapping his forehead in Plato’s cave.

The grim focus on winning above policy, on spin over substance, was in evidence across the power spectrum. I spoke with ANC deputy secretary general Jesse Duarte, who had been in the city almost a week harassing citizens door to door.

People are really quite happy,” Duarte told me, “and they now complain about the cost of electricity, which to me means they’re getting the services. We have not been turned away from homes, and our people haven’t taken the media agenda. People have integrity and they’re not uneducated — people have made up their minds against the media agenda against for our president. It’s also genuine that the people feel that the media and the opposition are trying to divide the ANC.”

It didn’t matter that just hours before we spoke, ANC Women’s League president Bathabile Dlamini had been reduced to tears by a hostile crowd, an encounter that had gone viral just hours before we spoke. But to Duarte, to the rest of the brass, “the internet” and its manipulators are part of an agenda.

Let me assure you, we’re feeling very bullish,” continued the dep sec gen. “Key DA activists have left the DA because of the racism in that party. They’ve told us that it’s patronised them—that’s the word they used. We’re bullish with good reason. I think the sense we’re getting is we’re doing quite well.”

What of Nelson Mandela Bay’s infamous corruption? “What we’re hearing from the community is that it’s been dealt with,” she said. “Metro itself has appointed very competent people to run the metro.”

The loop, then, was closed. Metro had fixed metro. All was going well. Time to party.

* * *

The night before the launch, deep inside the Radisson Blu: the President of the Republic. Outside, his security detail, backed up by an armoured car. Soon, his friends will be in the armoured car business, which means the president will even be benefitting from the security he doesn’t really need. Still, the president of any country must be secure in comfort. And throughout the Radisson, the jolly faces of the ANC’s establishment, and the up-and-comers who hope to one day replace them. Power, money and luxury — this is how it has ever been. The hookers mingled with the big men who mingled with the bigger men, while upstairs, in a dimly lit room, the president presided over it all.

* * *

The head honchos arrived at about 11:30am on Saturday morning, walking through the tunnel into the vicious sun. The Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium’s red seats poked through the yellow t-shirts like busted teeth: I’d generously say that there were 30,000 people in and around the neighbourhood, about 80,000 short of the “target”. I’ve never really understood the South African political party dick-swinging contest that tub-thumps the size of crowds for political rallies — surely it’s the votes that count? (Or, heaven forbid, the number of election promises actually delivered upon?)

But no — on stage, Baleka Mbete insisted that more people were coming, the busses were late, there would be at least 50,000. The lack of live humans suggested that something was amiss. No one really seemed to care, everyone I spoke with appeared demoralised. The bussed in crowds seemed bussed in, there for the entertainment and the grub. They certainly cheered when JZ properly busted out the moves. He can still dance.

He is the greatest dancer.

The ANC can pull these events off on their sleep, and indeed — despite the music and the female dancers wearing no pants — the event felt sleepy, perfunctory. (The incongruity of underdressed young women shaking their asses literally in front of the ANC’s aged Top Six was apparently lost on the organizers, but nonetheless summed things up nicely.) And while the confluence between entertainment and politics increases across the world, the reliance on B-list guests and razzmatazz felt completely desperate. Indeed, once Zuma took to the stage to drone out the specifics of his party’s election manifesto, the source of the desperation was clear: there were no specifics. It was difficult to focus on what he was saying, because he wasn’t really saying anything.

The heads of Sanco, Cosatu and the SACP spoke. Eastern Cape chairman Phumulo Masualle spoke. “The manner in which President Zuma is providing leadership is in the best interest of the country and the ANC‚” he said. No one referenced Zuma’s recent troubles with the Constitution Court, except for Zuma, who with weapons-grade chutzpah insisted that the ANC was guided by the Constitution, and a vote for the ANC was a vote for that much lauded document. People started streaming out while he droned on, oblivious.

The manifesto is called Advancing People’s Power. Soon, you’ll be able to read it online. I’ve read it. It’s a corporate brochure jacked up as an election platform. It has zero substance, which means the ANC will resort to campaigning on the following: we are the party of Mandela; our opponents are racists; houses are coming, social grants will never stop. These are the established shibboleths blasted from loudhailers in local communities, in the small rural outposts of Nelson Mandela Bay municipality where green, gold and black are the colours of God.

Election season has begun, kicked off in an apartheid museum in front of a bunch of “supporters” who didn’t seem to care. It couldn’t have been planned more perfectly. The launch itself was a lie that revealed a truth:

It wasn’t the empty stadium that will eventually matter. It was the empty manifesto. DM

Photo by Richard Poplak.

Gallery

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