The Gathering Twenty Twenty-Four delivers a heady mix of SA impressions and realisations

Dear DM168 reader,

Outside my hotel window, the sun is kissing Lion’s Head, adding a golden glow to the flat top of Table Mountain. I have been here in Cape Town for the past two days to attend Daily Maverick’s The Gathering Twenty Twenty-Four.

Read more in Daily Maverick: The Gathering 2024

Waking up to this majestic view is a calming respite from the raucous reality of the roller coaster ride we are in for in the run-up to the 29 May election. The final debate at The Gathering brought this reality home as we watched a combined WWE Smackdown and Jerry Springer moer-mekaar-break-up-make-up fest.

My colleague Stephen Grootes clearly pressed the testosterone button of the all-male leadership panel. ActionSA’s Herman Mashaba and the DA’s John Steenhuisen were going at each other so much that they drove the more emotionally intelligent leader of the IFP, Velenkosini Hlabisa, to calmly assure the audience that the members of the Multi-Party Charter (MPC) are indeed singing from the same “get the ANC out of government” hymn sheet.

Admittedly, the bar was set very low, but the ANC’s Ronald Lamola handled himself with dignity and amusement at the MPC bickering despite having the entire audience pitted against him for the governing party’s role in South Africa’s 30-year descent into the depressing doldrums of 2024.

Gayton McKenzie of the Patriotic Alliance (PA), however, is a manifestation of toxic masculinity on steroid overdrive, even surpassing Steenhuisen, who, we must recall, thought it amusing to refer to his ex-wife and mother of his children as “roadkill” during a podcast.

McKenzie’s communication range pretty much boils down to gangsta rap. Shout, shoot and obliterate. He said he would bomb Lesotho if a terrorist organisation from there kidnapped and murdered South Africans. This was when Grootes asked whether he considered Israel’s continuing bombardment of Gaza to be genocide. And he also wants to bring back the dompas so he can weed out foreigners. As host Rebecca Davis noted, any voter who sees the PA as the answer to our country’s problems needs a frontal lobotomy.

That was the gutter. Here is the hope. There was an earlier panel, hosted by Daily Maverick’s Ferial Haffajee and Nonkululeko Njilo, which featured newcomers Zackie Achmat, the activist who is standing as an independent, and Songezo Zibi, the leader of Rise Mzansi, as well as Mmusi Maimane, who leads Build One South Africa.

I know most people will probably vote for the devils they know, but I think these three deserve a seat at the table. Listening to the ideas they have for improving our country and their understanding of the work they need to do to participate fully and effect constructive change as members of Parliament make me believe they will elevate the level of debate.

Lindiwe Mazibuko and Mbali Ntuli – two young women who both left the DA – were impressive in their call for all of us to stop handing our power to politicians. Their call for us to participate in city Integrated Development Planning processes, ward committees and community policing forums is one we should all heed. As they said, we need to do more for democracy than voting once every five years.

The most sobering realisation about the upcoming elections is that there are no saviours in any political party who are going to lead us out of the current quagmire. And that is a relief. Ntuli, Mazibuko, Zibi, Achmat and Maimane are right. It is up to each of us to vote and to be active citizens wherever we live. Because we can never leave our fate in the hands of rabble-rousing, power-hungry, venal politicians.

The hope, dear readers, lies in us. As I leave the majestic mountains of the Mother City to fly back home to our administrative capital, here’s some poetic inspiration from Ben Okri’s An African Elegy:

“We are the miracles that God made
To taste the bitter fruit of Time.
We are precious.
And one day our suffering
Will turn into the wonders of the earth.”

Please hold these words in your hearts as I do. We need to see the light within us to work our way out of the darkness.

Our lead story is about the shaky state of the coalitions vying to remove the ANC, and how certain parties doubt the Electoral Commission’s ability to ensure free and fair elections. Let me know your thoughts at [email protected]

Yours in defence of truth,

Heather

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.