ALL eyes on Port Elizabeth then for the launch of the ANC’s local government election manifesto, an otherwise mundane event were it not for the thorny matter of one Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma.

Will the growing liability that is the President be cheered by the masses as he enters Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium? Will the masses who do wish to attend this colourful event be vetted by security experts and monitored by party goons lest they do not in fact cheer but hurl abuse instead? We cannot say. 

On one hand, it would appear the party leadership is drawing some comfort from the fact that, as the embarrassing March 31 Constitutional Court judgment over the Nkandla upgrades recedes into the past, so too will this recall fuss fade to a distant whimper. Time, as they say, is a great healer.

But, on the other hand, the controversy is certainly not going away anytime soon, and the ANC’s top officials, led by deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte, swept into PE this week to be confronted, according to Business Day, by about 300 angry local branch leaders who wanted Zuma disciplined for embarrassing the party and the country.

The Luthuli House nobs tried to fob off the rabble with a suggestion the matter had been “adequately dealt with” in the National Assembly when the DA’s motion to have Zuma impeached was defeated, but the branches were having none of that, and “spoke back at the leadership”, saying the public clearly thought otherwise.

This is not insignificant. The rank and file do not readily “speak back” at Duarte, not unless they want to live. Her gorgon glare reportedly freezes the blood at fifty paces, and a hideous death follows within seconds.

On to more cheering matters. Zuma, you may recall, had reminded the nation, soon after the ConCourt verdict, that he was still very much the boss. “As your shepherd,” he told a gathering in KwaZulu-Natal, “let me lead you.” 

This caused much mirth here at the Mahogany Ridge, and there came drollery from the regulars about shepherds with crooks and the like.

No shortage, though, of ovine behaviour on Thursday when the ANC hit the campaign trail in Uitenhage, where Zuma reminded the citizenry of the strangely narcotic effect of supporting the ruling party: “We are here to ask for your votes. When you vote for the ANC, you feel peaceful inside.”

So peaceful, in fact, that he had to start singing his war song, Umshini Wam, and doing that zombie dancing stuff. But not before reminding supporters that, despite the calls for his resignation from opposition parties, civil society organisations and within the ANC, he was in for the long haul when it came to tending the flock: “I took a decision to work for you — they can swear at me and say whatever, I will work for you until I die.”

Said commitment was well received by cheering supporters, some of whom seemed to be having their own psychedelic acid trip in the presence of their shepherd. “Wow!” one awestruck woman was quoted as saying. “He’s a yellow-bone! Even his head is yellow. He is so light, he must have put on foundation or Eskamel.”

A “yellow-bone”, we’ve been informed, is slang for a light-skinned black person. Eskamel, on the other hand, is a sulphur-based acne treatment. Is it possible that a man who turned 74 this week could still be bothered with pimples? But perhaps this is none of our business.

Elsewhere, Julius Malema gave an indication of the sort of election campaign we could expect from the Economic Freedom Fighters as it sought to define the lowest common denominator out there. 

Speaking in Soweto, he told his audience it was their revolutionary duty, as black people, to have more babies. This would secure their political future, he added. 

“Give birth and expand because if we do not make children we are going to disappear as a black nation… White people do not want us to give birth because they know we are more than them. So that they can be more than us and the day they are more than us they will take over our land.”

Not only does this contradict the EFF’s current position that whites already own nearly all the land, but it is a dive of such unprecedented depths into the warm, welcoming folds of incomprehensible dumbness that were Malema to rise to the surface from this darkened abyss without first spending time in some sort of numeracy decompression chamber, he would get the bends and his brain would burst. 

Which would be interesting.

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.