Goodbye to the Tsar and other thoughts

It’s been described as a ‘triumph for democracy’ within the ANC. One from which the people of Zimbabwe might have learned. A leader who got beyond his mandate and was reigned in and humiliated by his own people. The Romanov of South Africa. Deluded by the Rasputin of his own thinking.

Mercifully, in Thabo Mbeki’s case, he got to shuffle off stage, but with nary a shred of dignity intact. I feel sorry for Mbeki, but it’s a warning to cerebral people not to misread, or worse, ignore, the sentiment, of the visceral masses. Thank goodness, however, for Kgalema Motlanthe in the new ANC deputy president slot. Some hope left, yet...

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. The finale to the top-six voting at the ANC’s 52^nd national conference at Polokwane was a debacle of note. Whoever Dren Nupen is (Google doesn't know), she ain’t no mistress of ceremonies, results announcer or public speaker and should be banned for life from ever approaching a microphone again. Didn’t she and the dolts who unleashed her in public realise that you can’t have ‘whispered’ conversations in front of a bank of live microphones? Learning to pronounce African names correctly would also have been helpful. Having the results projected live and in an orderly fashion on large screens, even better.

The entire executive team results announcement reminded me of a nursery school concert, such was the chaos and ineptitude. It had clearly not been thought through, or the sequence discussed. Extemporaneous 'rehearsals in public' seemed to be the chosen path. Did Ms. Nupen really expect to announce Jacob Zuma as the new president of the ANC and have his vocal supporters sit politely through her subsequent confusing and repetitive announcements? She was reminiscent of a colonial school mistress trying to bring the native children to order. What an embarrassment. I had no idea something could actually be so bad.

It was also appalling, that for whatever bizarre reason, only the SABC TV feed was permitted (for we locals) from the conference. Camera-men 'pulling focus' on the crowd as if in a training session for camera zoom function. Was that a money-making racket, or yet another visionary brainstorm from the law unto himself, Thabo’s man, known as Dali Mpofu? With a bit of luck he might be replaced by a Zuma-ite in his position as CEO mouthpiece for the government at SABC.

Now we wait for the results of nominations to serve on the NEC (National Executive Committee) of the ANC. The numbers have been seriously bumped up, so this body will become even more ponderous and unwieldy. That doesn’t augur well for enhanced efficiency or slick implementation.

PR people, event organizers and political parties will be able to use footage from this amateur fiasco in Polokwane, as a magnificent reality TV example, of how never to do things in the future. An expensive documentary and training video, for its estimated R 30 million price tag. But in entertainment value, better than Spielberg.