By: Clyde N.S Ramalaine
The ‘Cyril and Julius circus’ is coming to town promising a bonanza episode loading. Don’t be fooled by their hogging the media spaces spitting hate and threats. The discerning eye and those not suffering selective amnesia would tell you these two are, as the adage goes, as thick as thieves.
They promise to give South Africa another stalemate episode in the season come March 20, under the show banner of bringing the country to a standstill. They both need this show, the one, Mr. Amoeba, to flex his non-existing muscle, the other to shout insults in a press statement. In case you forgot, these two are close. Remember, it was Cyril who sent Julius to go and see Zuma for tea after Raymond’s constitutional court abuse episode. Julius has, until now, never denied this claim some of us made at the time. So don’t be fooled when it matters these two share an expensive if not expansive bromance.
Those who can remember will tell you what Cyril said today about responding with might or brutal force on the EFF-led march is strikingly synonymous with the words we, as students, heard from PW Botha in the mid-80s. Cyril is a hollow, illegitimate, and distastefully failed president, morally repugnant, and constitutionally delinquent. He simply never can inspire trust or truth. In my home language [ Afrikaans]– ‘hy is klankende metaal en ‘n luidende simbaal.’ He simply never can inspire trust or truth. No amount of threats of unleashing his what we call apartheid dogs on a strike action will legitimise him. He has failed and is a complete failure my grandson of 3 years knows and says it every time he cannot watch his favourite Youtube-based Paw-Patrol progamme because of load-shedding.
Cyril’s Glencore and Phala Phala crimes attest more than soiled diapers, and he assumes he can let R5 rifles fix that and make him legitimate.
Cyril’s apparent tough talk this season will not erase the grotesque failure of his leadership that produced the massacre of July 2021. Who will forget Phoenix in July 2021, where armed to the teeth, racists in the name of protecting their businesses and homes unleashed their long-held revenge on blacks for what some consider a sin perpetrated in the early 1900s.
Need I remind you that until now, Cyril has failed to pause to commemorate the more than 300 that died because they were blacks? He was too busy with conspiracy theories about insurrection, sabotage, and ill-informed tribalistic anti-Zulu ethnic statements led by a kamikaze intelligence deputy minister detailing a failed security cluster.
So Cyril will threaten us and pretend his soldiers can do what they did to Collins Khoza in the heat of his forced lockdown for COVID- 19 that we all know was a hoax. This while his current freelancing advisor, with a new assignment as a volunteer in the presidency, was flying money into SA illegally. Until Phala Phala, the Achilles hill of his presidency, attest to the coagulum of lies, deceit, and more lies.
Have we not been here before? You will hear Ronald, Bheki, Khumbuzo, and Thandi pretend they have everything under control as the security cluster when all they trust in is to turn us into an apartheid-State by threatening to unleash police and army against marchers. They will lie and tell you they were protecting South Africans when they were protecting the white interest and the thin veneer of black elites in which they feature centrally.
Yes, Cyril is the same guy that gave instructions for concomitant action that produced SA’s first big massacre [Marikana] on August 10, 2012, for which he still needs to account. Because in SA, he escapes all courts in judgment, and the NPA and State apparatus are repurposed to focus on all but him. It is, therefore, easy for him to make this threat because he banks on being untouchable. As you saw with the leaked draft report of the acting Public Protector who makes Wally Rhoode, former head of protection service for Cyril, the fall guy. The clearly inebriated and promised acting PP wants us to accept that Rhoode did all he did, meaning flying with Benjani [ key advisor] and Zizi as deputy minister to Namibia or the border without Cyril’s blessing or knowledge. The proverbial nyaope is going cheap in the acting PP’s office because she does not realise her report, while at pains to exonerate Cyril, if left in its current form, will be Cyrils undoing.
On the other hand, the EFF is irrelevant in leading any revolution of the disenfranchised black masses anytime, anywhere in SA. It is high in polluted air and makes a mockery of a legitimate struggle. The best analogy of the EFF is the small dog that barks at the truck when the truck comes to a standstill. It simply does not know what to do. I have as far back as more than 12 years talking about Malemaism. As such, I lament that separating Julius from the EFF is impossible since he is the EFF and the EFF is Julius. This means if Julius is in the kitchen, the entirety of the EFF, notwithstanding its certificated brainy bunch, is in the kitchen, let alone the toilet.
Julius, the EFF, has mastered the craft of attempting to hijack legitimate causes and, dismally, failing to prove leadership beyond the press statement. The EFF is thus a press statement organisation, just not any revolutionary outfit. It never was and never will be. The EFF has not anywhere shown South Africans it can lead even a meager Metshimolo municipality. The idea of removing Cyril is cooked up in a coalition he plans with Paul Mashatile, which will see him a Deputy President of SA. Pipedream stuff, but in SA, which details a tragicomedy, these things are possible since all political parties have now acclimatised to the notion of coalitions as their personal means of survival.
Julius, on the other hand, knows that on March 20, all we will see is what we know is their filibustering. The EFF knows how to perform for one solid hour and is removed from Parliament. Despite their claims, they have never stopped any parliamentary address by any ANC president. So, they will march, but it will mean nothing because, before 1 pm, they will all be dismissed nursing the bruises. There will be no bringing the country to a standstill; this country is already at a standstill for the poor blacks because the elites can threaten brute police and army force while whites control and dictate, abusing this so-called egalitarian constitution for their interest.
So, March 20 will come and go, and Cyril will not be removed by cheap filibustering of those who regularly get beaten up on national TV and thrown out of Parliament after their filibustering. After being embarrassingly beaten up by Cyril’s dogs, Julius will take his usual pain tablets – a microphone to make cheap statements.
I take neither Cyril nor Julius, two sides of the same coin in serious threats because they are both peeing-in-the-wind and spraying themselves and want us to witness their cheap flexing. They both do not remotely represent what South Africa needs in any political leadership sense to transform South Africa into one where the masses are economically free. They are both answerable to the same British bosses. They both remain untrusted and have to come clean on their Limpopo based question marks. The one Phala-Phala the other the Ratanang Family Trust and VBS and other tenders that cannot be forgotten.
If South Africans are truly tired of Cyril and his corrupt and immoral leadership, vote him out in 2024. The ANC will not eliminate this guy because foreign capital infiltrated what once was a glorious Movement until today as I previously had said under Cyril it has become a brothel at all levels, particularly at the NEC level. The voters must vote them out and what he stands for.
Neither do I take the white cohort of defenders of Cyril seriously. They, along with Cyril and Julius, represent what is wrong with SA, and together they make up the triangle of a nightmare that keeps us carceral and denies true economic emancipation to the masses.
You hear the other failure of ESKOM leadership, Mpho Makwana telling us to be grateful for load-shedding stages 1- 3, it could have been worse. If this is not the sign of a failed and incompetent ESKOM chair who celebrates mediocrity nothing will be. Expect the ESKOM incompetent and IPP endowed chair to put us on March 20 back into load-shedding stage 6.
So expect bruised egos, loudmouth press statements, from both the lapdogs of Cyril and Julius, with maybe even an actual electricity shutdown since the only shutdown we are about to have is a power- blackout. Who knows, on March 20, Eskom’s cul-de-sac chair is planning to get his slice of peeing in the wind.
As for Cyril and Julius, they cannot fool us. They only spray themselves. Let them pee-in the-wind, that’s their real contest. Since both struggle in legitimacy and is not trusted by South Africans. Both Cyril and Julius remain answerable to the British Crown. When Renwick call they answer in closed door rooms, with no shouts and insults but ja – baas.
The one in threat of the might-of-the law when the totality of his political leadership in deputy and presidential office attests to one with scant regard for the law. An actual constitutional delinquent. Some contend the worst the ANC ever produced. The other is in unending hollow economic- freedom-fighting rhetoric of press statements, attempting to hijack the true cause of economic emancipation when he is nowhere in praxis. His party purposefully ignore the fact that despite 10 years of its existence South Africa is yet to trust Julius to lead its smallest municipality let alone province.
As for Cyril and Julius, they will never fool us. Shall I repeat myself, they only spray themselves. No need to get your favourite libation in hand the Cyril and Julius show will disappoint as per the script.
Political Analyst, Theologian, Lifelong Social and Economic Justice Activist, Author, Published Poet and Freelance Writer.
