LETTER: Cultural paradoxes will tear SA apart

The “wanted” posters on the King Shaka Airport boulevard outside Durban suggest a Zulu seance.

Jacob Zuma’s were oversized and replete with Zulu warriors, to channel the past glory of the great king.

The ANC’s Ramaphosa was a midget by comparison, and the slogan “Together we can do more” had all the nourishment of stale pap. The IFP is still clearly possessed by the spirit of Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Chris Pappas of the DA, wisely bespectacled, trailed in fourth place.

This line-up illustrates some of the cultural paradoxes that will tear SA apart. While airports would mean nothing to King Shaka and overweight males dressed in Adidas trainers and Ray Bans brandishing Zulu weapons appear ridiculous, Shaka’s symbolic power is being resurrected. His ghost will trump Buthelezi’s and the slippery “foreigner” Ramaphosa.

In any European country Pappas should win by a landslide, but this is Africa. It’s the poor who will hold power on May 29, and our leaders know it. Their visits to African Christian churches and chiefs will multiply. Nothing will be said about the Ingonyama Trust and, as expected, the MK party has promised to double grants while nationalising “the land”. 

As in KwaZulu-Natal, so too in the rest of the country. The culturally bereft urban poor will be courted by the EFF and Gayton McKenzie’s PA. The wishes of the diminishing few who actually pay for everything will be fractured by those promising silver bullets that don’t exist.

The corruption of the ANC may be seen as preferable to the chaos that is coming when tribal rivalries stalk the land. Media references to referendums on Cape independence are now pejoratively prefaced, but surely a lifeboat must be prepared?

James Cunningham
Camps Bay

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