Phoenix

 Dear ANC

Thank goodness for the DA's propensity for shooting themselves in both feet.

What a grand opportunity for a flamboyant display of unrighteous indignation. You can cover a multitude of sins with this gift of the gods of political opportunism. And boy, we are talking a multitude. To list them would turn this post into a facsimile of War and Peace. You do know that we're talking of the Phoenix election posters. I can barely bring myself to type the name without breaking out in hives.

Interestingly, a commentator pointed out that the president and others praised people for defending their communities. But that's beside the point. Whatever said point may be.

You ought to use this opportunity like the mythical phoenix. Revive it from the  sad ashes of your own sorry campaign  at every opportunity. Why not raise a monument? We could have a danger - tape cutting ceremony. But let's go frugal; no more than a million.

Mr Cele spoke a while back. It was with a passion that we've not seen when he discourses on all the boring violence and murder elsewhere in the land. The timbre of his voice swelled with gravitas as he uttered the magic word: 'racism'. It was like seeing an otherwise placid person transformed by a stiff dose of speed. 

A suitably grave TV person spoke of 'playing with people's lives'. I thought that's what we'd been witnessing for many decades. Is that not the whole political game in our country?

Pious and sanctimonious sentiments descended like the Durban rain. I was reminded of Auden's:

In the nightmare of the dark

All the dogs of Europe bark

(Substitute anything for Europe).

Two things come to mind. One: just the matter of perspective. Two: why is made to sound as if the Phoenix community is entirely made up of mass murderers? 

Yours in the struggle for perspective.

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

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O Tichmann 

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