No surprises and nothing to see here folks . . .

I am no authority on the history of our struggle against apartheid but I am old enough to have collected some fragmented memories of the days of mzabalazo. Thanks to these memories I am not particularly surprised by the recent mud-slinging between the ANC Youth League and the Democratic Alliance.

The Democratic Alliance pursues an agenda that seeks to bring the ANC to its knees, an agenda that seeks to defeat the ANC and to do so at all costs. The ANCYL pursues an agenda that seeks to destroy or crush, as Julius Malema said, those that get in the way of the ANC. The childish and deamening statements from both these organisations bears testimony to their respective agenda.

This is not news. I repeat, this is not news. For the love of the universe I wish e-news channel would get that. But then again maybe my good friend is onto something. He shared an observation with me that suggests that what is going on with the ANCYL may be more deliberate than accidental. He suggested that I look at the growth of tabloid reporting and the growth in circulation of the local tabloid publications in South Africa. I may be wrong but I suspect that The Sun newspaper is a very popular daily newspaper. Anyone who has ever bothered to page through this paper will know the kind of stories that it carries. My friend says that there seems to be a fascination with that which is vulgar and macabre. So, if the ANCYL seeks to endear itself to the tabloid readers (which seem to be a lot of South Africans), then it makes sense that it would walk the walk and talk the talk of the tabloid. I am not sure what to make of this but it has a ring of logic to it.

The militance of the youth is not news either. It is the same militance that in the mid-eighties saw young people terrorise their own communities in the name of the struggle for liberation. Bear with me. In my small township back then, a consumer boycott was called. My recollection is that my family and people I knew supported this campaign and did not buy from the white businesses. Please bear in mind that communicating with the community was not easy back then, you would have ended up in jail or dead for calling on the community to boycott white businesses. It follows therefore that communication was not good and some people may not have known about the boycott. It is also possible that other people may have decided not to support the camapaign. This did not make a difference to those mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters who were accosted as they got off the taxis or buses and made to consume what they bought. People were made to eat or drink what they bought as punishment for not heeding the call of the people. They were made to drink fabric softner or cooking oil. They were made to eat soap and other terrible stuff. Back then, the inteded end justified the means employed to achieve that end.

What has not happened is a debrief of our militant youth post 1994 and by all accounts it is business as usual when it comes to matters of the struggle. Needless to say, it is after all aluta continua. Think of the recent taxi strikes, the labour strikes and the campus strikes.

The DA on the other hand has a proud history of support and maintenance of white privilege. They have used all manner of fancy terminology to cloud their true agenda without much success. The debates of access to campuses such as UCT that I was part of were always qualified by the like so Ryan Coetzee (chief strategist of the DA) with "the need to maintain standards". Take this comment to its logical conclusion bearing in mind that at the time, the Honourable Zille worked for the university concerned. Competence has long been used as a barrier to the entry of marginalised. Do not be surprised by Helen Zille being herself. I believe it was a fair call to question the composition of her cabinet. Of all the responses she could have given, she chose a vulgar demonisation of Jacob Zuma, a president under whom she serves. She has stated many times before and after the elections that her government will put the right people in the right positions in order to ensure delivery - whatever that means. These men must be the right people - so why is that not the answer to question posed. What does the president's sex life have to do with any of this?

These are the characters involved in this play and this is who and what they are. Nothing new and nothing to see.