Gob and Lip Smacking

’Tis the Season of Gob and Lip Smacking

WHAT got into that which we shall call the mind of some normally sensible and calm ANC politicians and the Premier of the Western Cape, the pearl in South Africa’s diadem (read that as you will), I cannot for the life of me imagine.

I can perhaps understand the likes of Julius Malema (known to my medical pals as the Fatal Melanoma) mouthing off and speaking before thinking. There are good reasons for it which, I am sure, you can work out for yourself. Mr Malema, in case you don’t live in these parts, is führer of the ANC Youth League, usually referred to in the more respectful press as the ANC children’s department.

Apart from the insults (somebody forgot one of the great truths of insults: offence cannot be given; it can only be taken), which bordered on that demon of politics, farce, there was a gob stopping lack of restraint. So much so that the ANC, once they had remembered where they had put the book on humility, came out on the telly and apologised. Sort of. More like a statement of regret.

Godzilla, meanwhile, claims she was misquoted in a letter to the Sowetan, that champion of all, in which she upbraided President Zuma. As if the poor man didn’t have enough on his plate.

Apparently the letter, when published, accused our President of endangering the lives of his wives. He had had unprotected sex with an Aids victim.

You can imagine the odour of sanctity that usually surrounds the DA being seriously overcome by a smell of an entirely different kettle of fish.

Why is it that politicians, especially in South Africa, seem unable to distinguish between the state and its offices, and the party and what the ANC still, quaintly, calls cadres.

It might be a good time, this period of knuckling down to something other than the trough, to convert the ANC from a revolutionary movement into a political party; and to start behaving like one.