So, 2024 — the year that was... dry, politically hot, and very stinky

So that was the year that was. I’m sure many people sitting down and looking back – and one should doubtless be sitting down to look back – are saying this: “That was the year that was.”

But what was the year that was? What was it that happened? And can I bear to go back through a website or two to remind me what happened? No, reader, I can’t…

Okay, I do recall there was a general election. And one in the US, where the shitheads won.

The election here left the ANC, last remnant of the Glorious Victorious Liberation Movement, without the majority it has held since, well, liberation. Hence coalitions, with all the negotiations thereby entailed, and mostly a big shotgun marriage with the DA.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during the surely tense and somewhat bickery negotiations that had Helen of Troy, sorry, of the DA, huddled in a smoky back room with Fikile Mbalula – two of the biggest bigmouths in South African politics having to wrangle a deal! Imagine the grandstanding! Imagine the grandiloquence! I’m sure if I wasn’t on the wall, as a fly, I’d be rolling on the floor laughing.

Of course, no sooner had the leaders of that coalition put their hands on the Bible and sworn allegiance to the Constitution and the Handbook of Ministerial Privileges than they were backbiting about who’d hired whom to do what.

That ANC minister is corrupt! Well, no surprise there... Mr Steenhuisen, your newly hired political adviser or DA whisperer or whatever he might be is actually, historically, a racist! See the internet!

Well, at least one minister has now had their portfolios switched around, and after a few days of defiance Mr Steenhuisen, sorry, the Honorable Et Cetera Mr Steenhuisen, backed down, and sent his adviser packing.

Not that this toenadering (rapprochement) with the DA had much impact on Gauteng, the richest, most productive province in the country, and Johannesburg, the City of Fools’ Gold. No, here in this spiritual backwater the ANC is clinging to power by its perfectly manicured fingernails – which is to say it’s in bed with the EFF, an external faction of the ANC much given to toy guns.

And we here in Jozi have a new mayor, though that news item is not unique to the year that was, meaning this year, which is nearly was. We get a new mayor at least every six months, here in Joburg.

We also get rid of the oversight committee that checks who’s doing corrupt or wasteful deals, but rehire the city manager who not only has “presided over Joburg’s collapse”, as the DA likes to put it, but who was investigated for corruption…

I was just writing the above when my handlanger (helper), a resident of Fietas, the charming multicultural slum just up the road, where he basks in the real-life aesthetic of Roger Ballen and Die Antwoord, arrived to do some gardening or sweeping or car washing or something – anything for a few rands to put towards a Russian and chips.

The sewage is still running down the street, he told me.

That’s happening diagonally opposite my house, and it’s a bit of a puzzle because the house is presently uninhabited, as far as anyone can tell. I suppose you don’t have to have anyone living there to develop a blocked drain, or to have one thrust upon you.

It’s like a plumber said to me, one day, while contemplating the vast mess of sewage that was emerging into my back garden from a blocked drain: “And it’s not even your shit!”

Attentive readers of this column will recall my joy when Joburg Water fixed my broken drain, and I’m sure it is terribly busy at this time of year, but the sewage flowing intermittently down the road I live on has not been attended to for weeks. We just hastily roll up the car’s windows as we approach. Pedestrians, I imagine, have a harder time avoiding the stench.

My handlanger mentioned that there was no water in Fietas, as is often the case, but is there any water in Melville? In upper Melville, where I live, to be precise. This question is often asked, especially by people in lower Melville, who haven’t toughened up as much as those of us who get water, when we get it, from the ancient Hurst-hill reservoir system. And the answer, really, usually, is “no”.

Well, it comes and goes. Over the past few weeks it has been going more than coming, and I was busy being grateful for the fact that I have water tanks to augment or replace the municipal supply.

Until the pump that pushes the water from the tanks to the house started going, too – and then stopped. Turns out it’d burnt out its motherboard, either because it was overworked or an insect crawled in there and immolated itself on the circuits, which reminded me of something to do with the ANC losing its national majority…

Oh, and the Green Beans are searching people all over Fietas, said my handlanger. By Green Beans he means the kitskonstabels (instant constables), sorry crime wardens, employed in large numbers and at vast expense by Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi to bolster the ANC’s votes in the poll. Apparently the kitskonstabels wear green in some form, and they were troubling the people of Fietas today by randomly searching them.

What, I wondered, are they looking for?

Dunno, said my handlanger with a shrug.

They don’t need to be really looking for anything, he intimated; they just need to be busy doing something, puttering about annoying people, especially poor people. “Oh, look, there’s a pregnant woman! Let’s see if she’s hiding an AK-47 under her preggie dress! Or maybe she has some cooldrink money for us in her purse...” That kind of thing. They have apparently been trained by real police personnel.

Not that the existence of these crime wardens has helped the crime situation, however many people they randomly search. It certainly hasn’t helped in my area, or in Melville and surrounds generally, where crime marches on unstoppably, but maybe that’s because Panyaza’s kitskonstabels have been so busy in the slums they haven’t had a chance to get over the hill to search a few poor people and hassle a few indigents.

So, 2024… It remains only to say goodbye.

Can’t say it was a good year, particularly. Not even for the roses, which could probably do with some of the sewage flowing down the road as fertiliser, except I’m not about to go out there to get it. It’s not even my shit. DM

Shaun de Waal is a writer and editor.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.