Zuma certainly not humming Umshini Wami any more

A political animal I am not – but, then again, neither am I blind. And you have to be blind not to get upset by the hauls and he-he-hes of those with power.

Not that I believe in any trial by media, but I mean – listen properly – three thousand and sixty thousand million and seventy is a lot in anyone’s book just to look after a plane.

Admittedly a presidential plane, but I’m doing no jive, I assure you. I wish I could use “cloak-and-dagger games”. Problem is, there was no cloak and dagger, also no games.

It was done openly, the grabbing. “No shame,” as my gran said every time she caught me smoking behind the dam wall.

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And that is what upsets me too: what goes on behind those damn walls.

All those damn walls: whether it’s Eskom now charging solar users more for power – I frankly can’t get my head around that one
– or bobbies on the beach rather than the gangster streets, or yet another tender scam, or yet another Project Billions grinding to a halt because of vultures circling.

What is said behind those damn walls to get a nod for those?

“Don’t stress, no one will notice – or care.” But we do care and we aren’t blind.

You may think we didn’t bat an eyelid the nine years it took you to entrench exactly this grab culture from the top right down to the bottom, breaking this country, but we saw it all.

We saw how you used our money to run from court to court trying not to have your day in it.

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We saw you giggle all the way to Russia “because my health matters” We just didn’t laugh with you.

We saw you jiving, singing “Bring me my machine gun” – the song you made famous as you “battle for the soul of South Africa” like in your old MK days.

But see, this country’s soul is now our battle; our war cry. And we’ll fight you every step up to the court building.

For all I know, you’re not humming Umshini Wami any more, rather John Mellencamp: “Second best is what you get – till
you learn to bend these rules. Time respects no person – what you lift up must fall. They’re waiting outside – to claim my crumblin’ walls.”

Carine Hartman.

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