POpuLarITICS

After the last elections a lady I know from Khayalitsha told me about how at the eleventh hour she changed her allegiance from ANC to Democratic Alliance because the DA were handing out “nicer things” like t-shirts and boerewors rolls.

I also hear it’s not uncommon for candidates to hand out cellphone airtime to prospective punters.

I suppose with no hope of any real change the best bet seems to be ‘take what you can get now!’

It smacks of ‘stepfather syndrome’ – like your mom’s new boyfriend buying your good graces with gifts; it gets him in the door and into her panties, and later when you find out he’s a dickhead it’s too late.

I suppose giving away free stuff is one way to make friends, but the ANC know that to be prom queen you’ve got to get people to want to be you.

That’s why the ruling party big wigs tool around in cars that cost more than 520 weeks of wages, bring bodyguards to court sporting Armani and artillery, and base their campaigns on how good a dancer their president is.

And if status don’t do it, star power will. That’s why jazz guitarist Jimmy Dludlu can now be seen traipsing door-to-door telling his fans to vote the right way or it’s not only Jesus that will hate you, but celebs as well.

Having “offered [his] services to the party for this election campaign”, one wonders what those might be besides lending his famous face to election hopefuls.

Maybe he’s planning to strum along as Zuma sings his famous ‘machine gun’ song, or possibly an up-tempo version of the ‘kill the boer’ ditty comrades are so fond of.

Poor old Helen Zille tries to keep up – learning to toi-toi and boning up on some struggle tunes – and we can only hope she won’t get an Idols runner-up to tag along with her this time.

A friend of mine reckons politicians shouldn’t be allowed to bang on about what they’re going to do, they should only be allowed to talk about what they’ve done already. If the best they can come up with is a keyring and hotdog then it might give us something to think about.

If our democracy keeps sinking deeper into a mere popularity contest, with issues given brief lip service and the real question being how many famous people we can get on board and how many t-shirts we can hand out, then we might as well make the elections an SABC reality show and we can all phone in our votes.

At least then the airtime will be useful.