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Ed Herbst: Triple blow for ANC’s ‘Big Vegetables’

The 2016 municipal election results were not the ANC’s last song but they did show a big turn in the tide. And while the blue army of the Democratic Alliance took office in three of the major municipalities, many were hoping the hope of change would turn into reality.

And in Tshwane, that reality is rearing its head. New mayor Solly Msimanga has been in office for less than a month,and he’s cutting the previous administrations legacy at the knees.

He’s banned blue-light brigades, and most telling BMWs, he says Hyundai’s and Toyota’s can do the trick. There’s still a long way to go and many molemills to climb, but it’s all got Ed Herbst excited. He takes a satirical look at the anguish the ANC ‘Big Vegetables’ must be feeling as Msimanga upsets the apple cart. – Stuart Lowman

By Ed Herbst*

"Thinking it would retain Tshwane‚ the African National Congress-led administration bought 10 new BMW vehicles for the members of the mayoral council with an estimated value of over R5m. – Tshwane mayor gives new BMWs to anti-hijack police‚ says politicians can drive Hyundai Times Live 6/9/2016"

In Francophone Africa the oppressed majority of the population call their persecutors, the governing elite, “Grosse Legumes” – Big Vegetables – and the Big Vegetables have two singular characteristics.

The Big Vegetables in the rest of Africa – and here – live extraordinarily opulent lives in stark contrast to the poverty which bedevils ordinary citizens and they are not the kings of the road but the gods of the road.

When their convoys come barrelling down urban roads, sirens blaring and blue lights flashing, ordinary tax-paying citizens panic and do their best to get out of the way even though, in gridlocked, rush hour traffic, they have nowhere to go.

They note, though, that while the passengers in these chauffeured and body-guarded blue light convoys are vehement opponents of odious “colonial imperialism” and “monopoly white capital” their usual car of choice, Mercedes Benz or BMW, ironically epitomises, in an automotive context, their antipathies. And locally, although we are a proud member of BRICS, the Big Vegetables would not be seen dead in a Tata.

Jackson Mthembu, the bibulous ANC chief whip, is a fervent BMW fan and this helped him make it onto Gareth van Onselen’s snouting Roll of Honour:

"As the MEC for transport in the Mpumalanga government between 1996 and 1997, one Jackson Mthembu splashed out on 10 BMW 528s for the executive at a cost of R2.3m. His defence: “I am a leader in my community and therefore have a certain status — you can’t therefore be saying I should drive a 1600 vehicle.”

BMW fan

Another BMW fan, according to van Onselen is Blade Nzimande:

It is through the consistent inculcation of (Mandela’s) values that we can roll back the greed, corruption and selfishness of capitalism,” he said. A week later he took charge of a new R1.1m BMW 750i, at the taxpayers’ expense.

And before that it was the former Minister of Communications, Siphiwe Nyanda who bought not one but two 7 series BMWs with your money and mine and then, adding insult to injury, pimped them to the max.

Enhancing his reputation as an aficionado of the best wheels that your money can buy, he also got not one but two discounted Mercs from Arms Deal supplier, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) – something which Judge Willie Seriti assures us was above board.

And it was on the watch of former Tshwane mayor, Kgosientso Ramokgopa, governing as Luthuli House intended, that ten 3-series BMWs were purchased for R5m for the municipality’s Big Vegetables. Anything that “Jack Daniels” can do, Ramokgopa can do better.

Imagine, then, the Luthuli House bewilderment when the new DA mayor, Solly Msimanga, issued the following statement:

"No new luxury cars will be bought or leased for politicians‚ and if vehicles currently owned by Tshwane require replacement‚ sensible and low-cost vehicles will be procured. I will not allow public money to be spent on luxury cars‚ while our people struggle for services‚ houses and jobs. No more luxury cars will be bought or leased under my government."

A Hyundai i20 or Toyota Corolla can do the same job for a politician as an expensive sedan.

And then … and then … he goes on to donate the ten BMWs to the Tshwane Metro Police Department‚ where they will be used by the newly formed Anti-Hijack Unit.

Tshwane_mayor_Solly_Msimanga


Tshwane mayor Solly Msimanga

The heresy! The sacrilege! Dis nag! Cue sackcloth and ashes. The wailing and gnashing of teeth, the rending of garments at Luthuli House – it must have been piteous to behold.

Fight back

But the ANC is nothing if not resilient and, while it might have condemned Tony Leon’s “Fight Back” campaign as racist back in 1999, this is not the time for political niceties.

The ANC fired its first “Fight Back” salvo against the killjoy Democratic Alliance and its “clever blacks” as the Mayor of the ANC-led Mkhambathini Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, Mr Eric Ngcongo prepared to spend R700 000 in public monies on a new set of wheels – no Toyota Corolla for a man who clearly did not join the Struggle to remain poor.

Then the debate got really serious with the ANC Youth League, which spent R100 000 245.42 on a “love-in”, saying that Msimanga’s “racist” decision was political grandstanding and alleging that his sole intention in so doing was to “reverse the gains the ANC had made in improving the lives of black children.”

But Tshwane’s new ban on luxury cars was the least of it – more Democratic Alliance sacrilege was to follow – but surely the Luthuli House interns must have seen it coming?

Adding reprehensible insult to extreme injury, Msimanga, then entered the realm of the unthinkable and the unspeakable – he indicated that he would be following the example of the Premier of the Western Cape, Helen Zille, and banning blue light convoys. Here is what he said:

“Tshwane officials will now travel alongside ordinary citizens‚ they will wait in traffic and will stop at red lights.”

Reverential respect

How, then, is an adoring public expected to genuflect to the Big Vegetables and express unctuous and reverential respect if there is nothing to distinguish our elite coterie of ANC trough snouters from the plebs, the rank and file, the hoi polloi and the voting cattle?

But wait, there’s more!

Just when Luthuli House thinks the Democratic Alliance has plumbed to unspeakable depths, it goes a step further.

One of the perks of being a deployed Big Vegetable is the patronage you can dispense by ensuring that your party and your cronies get, in addition to the juiciest tenders, whatever discounts you can make available.

To the previous ANC cabal that has mismanaged and looted the Tshwane Metro for decades, this simply meant ensuring that other arms of government did not have to pay for or could defer payment for the services which the municipality provided.

Now the new mayor, Solly Msimanga, says “No more freebies!”

From an ANC perspective things keep getting darker and more threatening and their sense of foreboding as they await the next DA onslaught on their previously-privileged snouting world must be very debilitating.

In years to come the ANC’s most hallowed snouters will recall their valour in what, to paraphrase Dickens, they will remember as “The worst of times and the worst of times” – a time when even the deities deserted them.

Their normally silent spokespinners will then break their well-rewarded silence and, recalling their immense bravery against almost insuperable odds, they will draw upon the speech by Henry V to his troops before the Battle of Agincourt:

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,

And say “These wounds I had on Des van Rooyen’s day.”

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,

But he’ll remember, with advantages,

What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,

Familiar in his mouth as household words—

Zuma the Snouter, Ajay and Atul

Duduzane and Khulubuse,

Chancellor House and the Land Bank, Travelgate and Nkandla

Be in their flowing cups of Johnny Walker Blue freshly remembered."

Such is the existential crisis which the Machiavellian machinations of Solly Msimanga has created for the ANC – and with it the threat that the rim of the trough will become increasingly washed in crimson – perhaps Luthuli House should consider adding this matter to its elusive “Nine-Point Plan”.

  • Ed Herbst is a pensioner and former reporter who writes in his own capacity.

* For more in-depth business news, visit biznews.com or simply sign up for the daily newsletter.


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