The scenes that played themselves out at the Cosatu Workers’ Day rallies in Bloemfontein and Durban had a striking resemblance to events in Chinua Achebe’s fictitious Kangan state in West Africa. Except here the ordinary people at the events, also known as "the masses," took matters into their own hands and extracted some revenge from their leadership.
The leadership, also known as the VIPs, sat comfortably on cushioned chairs, sipping bottled water under the cool shade of the marquee. Numerous chairs were unoccupied for most of the time while waiting for the VIPs to arrive. To their right-hand side, about 10m away, stood mobile toilets for the exclusive use of the VIPs. The speaking podium was also under a shade to the left.
At the ANC conferences in June and December they will extract their pound of flesh from the leadership
"Isn’t the great thing about a VIP that his share of good things is always there waiting for him in abundance even while he relaxes in the coolness of home, and the poor man is out there in the sun pushing and shoving and roasting for his miserable crumbs? Look at all those empty padded seats!" as Achebe observed in Anthills of the Savannah.
The masses, on the other hand, had only the ground to stand or sit on. No chairs. No water. No shade, other than for the few who could find space under the trees. Not even the toilets were available to them. A fence about 2m high stood between the masses and their leaders — and the toilets. All this was paid for by the union fees of the masses.
Behind the fence stood uniformed police officers guarding the leadership. The masses were left to their own devices, with no police officers among them.
Hours after the planned start of the event, a motorcade of shiny black German vehicles — also paid for with the tax monies of the crowd, the ones with no chairs to sit on — rolled in and deposited their esteemed human cargo, in the person of Jacob Zuma. Similar scenes played themselves out in Durban, where ANC chair Baleka Mbete attended and spoke.
In the face of this opulence for some, Achebe would have asked about the masses of Kangan: "How does the poor man retain his calm in the face of such provocation? From what bottomless wells of patience does he draw?" But the masses of Kangan state always found ways to deal with it all: "His [the poor man’s] great good humour must explain it. This sense of humour turned sometimes against himself, must be what saves him from total dejection."
Who’s the boss?
But the masses of Bloemfontein and Durban turned their anger and dejection against the VIPs. With songs and boos, they prevented Zuma — who was scheduled to be the main speaker — from uttering a single word. Sdumo Dlamini was forced to remind the masses that he, Dlamini, is "still the president of Cosatu". Which didn’t save Zuma from humiliation.
In Durban, Mbete had to be saved by Cosatu officials from the booing and the mocking songs. Zuma and Mbete retreated to their shiny vehicles. The people had spoken. For those few hours, the VIPs were reminded who really is the boss.
They were lucky they were not dealing with the crowds of the Rustenburg platinum belt, whose anger fuels their creative juices. There, traditional songs from Pondoland get modified to say colourful things about VIPs. Even gospel songs acquire new lyrics and meanings where the Zuma name is inserted. In Bloemfontein they sang only about his departure. At Marikana, the songs get a lot more anatomically descriptive.
There’s going to be a lot more opportunity for the masses to reassert themselves ahead of the 2019 general election.
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