Word on the street in Mzansi is that the tiger that escaped from its enclosure in the leafy Gauteng town of Walkerville recently and a second one that was spotted in Edenvale a few weeks later were on a mission to find ANC leaders to express their displeasure with the state of affairs in this now alleged country.

Those with intimate knowledge of the goings-on in the animal kingdom warn that this species is so fed up with all the shedding going on in this country – load shedding, water shedding, law and order shedding, accountability shedding, moral shedding, common sense shedding, solutions shedding – that it wants to vent on ANC leaders the only way species like tigers can.

With the opposition parties having become so toothless, perhaps the fed-up public should very well put its trust in these big cats with ferocious teeth to get the misruling ANC out of its comfort zone. Truth be told, South Africa’s opposition is just as ineffective as the ANC.

It seems the best these opposition parties and their leaders can come up with in these times of crisis is issuing statements loaded with political rhetoric and making noise on radio stations. No bite, man.

Anyway, one is tempted to believe this analogy of the big cats going in search of the ANC bigwigs, especially given that the last time tigers freely roamed the streets of the city was way back before the scientific ­phenomenon of continental drift – when Africa and India were one.

If my expert sources are right about this, then the ANC is probably the first and only ruling party in the history of ruling parties to be so incompetent that even the animal kingdom decides to stand up and take action.

But if indeed the two tigers were searching for the ruling party’s leaders, it’s highly unlikely they would have found them in the streets that are walked by ordinary folk who graft every day to put food on the table and pay taxes that fund the lavish lifestyles of this ruling elite.

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First, these guys are chauffeur-driven everywhere in slick, shiny German machines paid for by the taxpayer, who’s struggling to even afford the steep price of bread and basic goods.

They are driven everywhere, including to the high-class Saxonwold Shebeen, in the company of a dozen armed heavies who all look so dour they could make fresh milk go sour in a matter of seconds.

When they are not being driven around they are safely relaxing in their high-walled security estates, also paid for by the taxpayer. Behind those high walls, they feast on the finest whisky, prawns and caviar, also paid for by the taxpayer.

Whoever is behind this Operation Tiger really had a great idea. But the timing was just too wrong. If you want to meet an ANC politician in the streets mingling with ordinary folk, then the best time for that is around election time.

During that time, for a few hours every day ahead of the election, cadres dust off their humility skills and “go back to the ­people”.

There’s no politician as humble as an ANC cadre at election time, eyeing a seat in Parliament or a high-paying government gig.

I heard that some of these cadres even undergo rigorous dietary regimens to shed a few kilos to minimise the fat cat image.

You can’t afford to look more than well fed in the eyes of the voter.

Especially when that potential voter survives, in a month, on far less than what the cadres spend on Cuban cigars and cognac in a single night.

With the ideas shedding that has become a mark of the ruling party in recent years, one wouldn’t be at all surprised if the ruling party establishes the Tiger Commission of Inquiry one of these days.

Although they never seem to have a budget for fixing mundane but serious issues such as potholed roads and leaking water pipes, they somehow always seem to find the money – and lots of it – for these commissions that hardly result in prosecutions and ­convictions.

Hey, hang on, wasn’t it strange that Gau-teng Premier Panyaza Lesufi, who seems to relish being seen at the scene of every crisis, was nowhere to be seen when paramedics, cops, animal rights activists and ordinary citizens were hard at work searching for these big cats?

I was in fact waiting for him to don his overalls and join the search party. But alas, the province’s number one citizen did not turn up. As the caring citizen that he is, I was expecting him to appear on the telly at least, condemning in the strongest possible terms the rogue behaviour of these big cats imported from India.

Hey, hang on, where do the Guptas originate from, by the way? Ja, well, no, that’s a story for another day.

Perhaps the reason the honourable premier missed the tiger gig was that he may have got the same intelligence passed on to Mr Styles, namely that the cats were, in fact, looking for his ilk – ANC cadres.

By the way, popular talk among these tjatjarag millennials is that the ANC already has a tiger in the form of a minister who we are told may soon take a bite at the already battered Eskom. Eeeeish… DM168

Mr Styles is the former president of the Organisation for Stylish People of South Africa (Osposa). He is against anything and anyone unstylish.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.