Cape Town - The EFF “Teletubbies” must take what comes their way if they disrupt Thursday’s State of the Nation Address by President Jacob Zuma in Parliament, says Tannie Evita, who sighed: “You want to put them over your knees and spank them!”
Her comments came after Tuesday’s delivery of her take on the state of the nation to the Cape Town Press Club amid much speculation over potential disruption by the red overalls on the parliamentary benches to force home their “Pay back the Money” demand.
“Will he (Zuma) be allowed to speak, or will freedom of speech for others stop his address?” asked Tannie Evita Bezuidenhout, an incarnation of satirist Pieter Dirk Uys.
In any case, what would Zuma say? That it was business as usual or focus on corruption as the prime evil and then blame apartheid?
“Can we still after 20 years of democracy scapegoat a bad system that officially ended in 1994? To keep blaming it for incompetence, carelessness and ineptitude would be, like in the 1960s, to blame Adolf Hitler for the miniskirt!” said Tannie Evita. “Hypocrisy! And yet, often hypocrisy today is still the Vaseline of political intercourse.”
With a benign smile belying razor-sharp current affairs comment, Tannie Evita said “there is no use in doing what the EFF Teletubbies do: accusing the ANC that created them”.
“Once they swore to kill for Zuma; now they swear to kill Zuma.”
If paying back the money was just about Nkandla, that could be solved in less than an hour. “Let all the comrades, who since 2009 (Zuma) has made millionaires, each donate R100 000. Debt plus interest will be cleared in a day. Or just SMS the Guptas.”
But it wasn’t about “a cluster of rondavels in the bundus of KwaZulu-Natal”, she cautioned. Nor was it about “huge bonuses lavished on mediocre minds” or the haemorrhaging of public funds through the “sieves of incompetence”.
“Pay back the money also means it is time for South Africans to pay back what South Africa has invested in them.”
Hence the #commitYourselfie, the campaign against corruption and pessimism to get South Africans to publicly say what they want for a future South Africa. Rock singer and guitarist Karen Zoid and Freshlyground front singer Zolani Mahola are among the musicians who collaborated on an anthem for the campaign, due out on YouTube.
Tannie Evita said even an ANC cadre had added a photo pleading for the protection of the constitution.
Tannie Evita said it was a case of “Pay back the money” for substantial salary increases to the police, all teachers and every nurse.
It was “Pay back the Money” for orphanages and old age homes. “Pay back the money so that prejudice never again becomes policy and hatred never again is tolerated.”
History need not repeat itself, it just had to rhyme – “from apartheid to tripartite, from amandla (power) to Nkandla” – said Tannie Evita, adding that media reports the ANC would rule until Jesus returns were wrong.
“The ANC will rule forever because Jesus Christ will not come back because the ANC will not give him a visa,” she said in reference to the Dalai Lama’s debacles.
Tannie Evita also said she was gatvol of whingeing whites. Democracy was happening, despite speed wobbles, so why the negativity and pessimism?
“Whoever thought we whites would get away with apartheid? Nothing happened to us. No Nuremberg trials. None of us was hung like Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity. And even now with the parole of (apartheid assassin) Eugene de Kock, we do not release him in Soweto on a Saturday afternoon!”
Tannie Evita was adamant: “When will we whites stop being white? When will we just allow ourselves to be South Africans?”
Admitting she was past the official retirement age, Tannie Evita insisted she was not giving up. “I will kill you with kindness… Je suis Evita,” she added, in reference to the recent show of solidarity with murdered French Charlie Hebdo cartoonists.
Now was the time for South Africans to use freedom of expression and freedom of speech to outline what they wanted from a future South Africa, urged the woman who is one of the personae of Pieter-Dirk Uys, a political satirist of over 30 years’ standing.
And that message must be clearly heard tomorrow by the cat-calling, accusation-driven and insult-exchanging political leaders in Parliament: “Let them stop and just listen… The people of South Africa are saying, very nicely, enough is enough. Please. Don’t wait for the guillotine.”
She questioned why many ANC cadres were keeping silent “even though they hate what is happening to a once-great liberation movement in the clutches of third-rate comrades with fourth-rate ideas”.
“Like in the old days of National Party rule, where all the broeders would crowd around a Vorster and a Botha and nod and nod and nod with their fingers crossed, today many comrades in the NEC (ANC national executive committee) will never say it loudly. Remember how they all stood round Thabo Mbeki and never corrected his misspoken suggestion about Aids?”
But all the good comrades, who did not make the headlines because they didn’t steal, must continue, said Tannie Evita: “You know who you are. We will find out where you are. We will support you and encourage you… Carry on, in spite of the noise at the top.”
Briefly outlining her expectations of Thursday’s State of the Nation address, she said she wanted to hear Zuma say he would resign.
“For health reasons, obviously, with full amnesty. We’ll give him Nkandla (as a retirement present).”
Political Bureau