MK party’s game of musical chairs shouldn’t be played by adults

If you read the MK party mission statement, two elements are intriguing at the moment: “inclusive policies” and “effective governance”. Nobody is doubting that changing MPs every two months to give everybody a chance to say “point of order” is pretty inclusive, but is that effective governance?

Since jumping into existence and becoming South Africa’s third biggest party, the MK party has so far held a party for a dude who walked from Limpopo to Nkandla, hired top officials, fired top officials, gifted us with more John Hlophe, moaned about vote rigging, unmoaned about vote rigging, had their leader expelled from the ANC in the most “duh” political move in history, and got taken to court over a logo.

Feel free to call me sceptical, but none of that really sounds like a path to having every citizen enjoying the fruits of democracy, equitable economic growth, and social justice. But that’s the claimed mission of the party.

How many of the 4.5 million people who voted for the MK party really care about their logo? Is having that fight even worth it for them? Maybe the name is important, but now the horse has bolted and an impact created. Everybody knows Jacob Zuma’s back in action, so changing the name and logo can’t be that damaging to a party that got nearly 15% off the blocks. That is, of course, unless you’d like to admit that the votes you gained were due to deliberate identity confusion.

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We must remember that the people who represent us are not elected directly by us but put there by the parties we vote for. Sure, we had our first election where individuals could stand, but divide any number by the number of individual candidates who made it, and you’ll get an error. We got angry at the DA for giving us an idiot like Renaldo Gouws and upset with the ANC for regifting us Zizi Kodwa… who also bounced after two minutes.

A game of musical chairs is fun for six-year-olds, but seriously, adults? Let this not be the way forward for the next five years. Internal politics must, obviously, happen. How can we expect good public policy though when the focus is on who gets to make the policy at the expense of actually getting the policy made?

To them, having friends in power is important. To us, having the people in power making good decisions on our behalf is important. Those two things could be reconcilable. It just can’t work when your friends are changing all the time.

That’s the problem we have in our political landscape; they obsess about who is or is not a friend and then go to war when alliances change, even if their former friend was doing a better job than they ever could.

Surely, when the people in your party are doing well and performing, your party looks good. Surely, when you start firing people less than a couple of months into office, you look like idiots who gave the country admittedly shocking leadership. Of those two options, one should be significantly more appealing, and yet, for whatever reason, no. Friendship seems to matter more. Until your friend has an opportunity to step on you, in which case then welcome to the South African political system.

ALSO READ: ‘Zuma show is a cult’ – Experts say MK party is ‘spaza shop’ with dictator firing members

It’s difficult to have faith in any system when it’s filled with children playing games, especially when the stakes are so high.

So please, let’s get all the firing over and done with. Better yet, let’s pass a law that freezes vacant seats for a period of time as punishment for giving the electorate poor representation that you had to fire down the line.

Just one day, could the legislature start, y’know, legislating?

Two months in, and all the action has been about who’s fired? We deserve better.