Tintswalo and balloons take centre stage amid the weird, the curious and the contradictory debates

The Constitution’s preamble is clear. Looking back, it pays tribute to those who suffered for justice and honours those who worked to build South Africa, but it also sets out to:

“...heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights; lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law.”

Little, if any, of those fundamental constitutional democratic values emerged in Wednesday’s debate on the 2024 State of the Nation Address (Sona) that continued the first day’s one-upmanship.

It got weird at times. 

To prove his point about how the ANC-EFF-Patriotic Alliance coalition in Knysna was incompetent, the DA’s Western Cape premier, Alan Winde, went off script to talk about a body left decomposing in the town’s water reservoir for 14 days. “The arms fell off when they pulled the body out.”

Knysna is close to Winde’s heart — it was his constituency years ago. But Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu klapped back, saying that unlike the DA-run Tshwane where people had died of waterborne disease, at least people in Knysna got water. (Mchunu failed to acknowledge that some residents of Knysna have been without water for two months - Ed)

“I would have preferred the honourable premier would have talked about Tshwane,” Mchunu said.

The comments of Winde’s predecessor, Helen Zille (now the DA’s federal council chair) in 2012 that Eastern Cape learners were “refugees” continued to boomerang as many ANC speakers painted the DA as racist and elitist.

It was part of the electioneering that characterised the two-day Sona debate. 

‘I am Tintswalo’

Paralysis and contradictions