Democratic Alliance’s John Steenhuisen shoots the moon

Thursday.

In a year from now, we will go to the polls once more.

I, for one, am registered and raring to go.

This fair Republic of ours is in some trouble, so the option of opting out on election day is no longer an option.

I know what I’ll be voting for, but not who.

The choices are increasing exponentially — if not qualitatively — as new parties pop up overnight and the initial independent candidates, who get to contest the elections for the first time in our history, put their hands up.

None have really grabbed my imagination — or my vote — as yet.

The existing parties are the ones who put me off voting in the first place; turned a joyous, constructive exercise into something of a waste of time — and ballots.

Some of the new ones don’t look much better. There are too many one-time comrades, decommissioned Democrats and former Fighters involved for my liking — not to mention the odd retired judge and former president’s son or two.

There is still time though. 

The last time I voted in the national and provincial elections was in 2014.

I got to cast what was undoubtedly the only vote for the Socialist Workers Revolutionary Party (SWRP) to be counted at the Ntolwane Primary School voting station at Nxamalala village near Nkandla.

My ballot paper went into the box minutes after then head of state Jacob Zuma cast his vote — ostensibly for himself and the ANC, although, in retrospect, one wonders — a deliberate attempt on my part to spoil any 100% Zuma outcome in uBaba’s personal ballot box.

A point was made but, given the SWRP’s failure to get a single seat anywhere, I may as well have spoiled my vote or not bothered making my X in the first place for all the effect that it had.

One lives and learns.

There are still 12 months and a couple of days to go before we get to choose who we want to lead us at national and provincial government levels, but things are already very firmly in the weird zone.

The governing party, which rightly fears a loss of its majority in most parts of the country, is already out of the blocks and trying to convince the punters to give them another five years of the same.

It’s not exactly an attractive proposition — unless you’re on the party list and in the queue for a legislature or parliamentary seat — and one that is going to take some selling if the ANC hopes to get the 50% plus one it needs to return Cyril Ramaphosa to the Union Building.

The party’s coalition with the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) at council level has resulted in some chaos at municipal level — as the good people of Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane have found out — and a pretty decent indication of which way the ANC will swing if it doesn’t get the numbers it needs to govern alone.

On the other side of the political street, the opposition coalition led by the Democratic Alliance (DA) can’t stop fighting about who is the boss for long enough to agree on a common candidate for the Johannesburg mayoral seat.

Its petulance city in the Johannesburg council chamber — Tshwane and Ekurhuleni likewise — as the opposition parties do what they do best and oppose, not the governing party and its allies, but each other.

It’s only a matter of time until the ANC secretary general, Fikile Mbalula, catches on and takes the gap. The best and probably only way to stop the ANC going into a coalition with the EFF is to vote for the ANC so that it has an outright majority and doesn’t need to.

Weird, but true.

The leader of South Africa’s current official opposition, John Henry Steenhuisen, is channelling his inner Elon Musk and urging voters — and rival parties — to join him and the DA on a trip, not to Mars, but to the moon.

Steenhuisen has been punting his Moonshot Pact for a couple of months now, a clear indication that the DA knows it has reached its electoral ceiling and will need the backing of an array of parties if it hopes to end the ANC’s majority outside the Western Cape.

It hasn’t gone that well thus far, mainly because the DA wants to dictate who talks to whom and who gets what positions in councils where the coalition has the numbers to govern.

Despite this, Steenhuisen is clinging to his script, seemingly oblivious of his party’s inability to actually agree with its would-be coalition partners about pretty much anything — shooting his (moon)shot, contradictions and inconsistencies be damned.

Ground control to Major John.