By RIAAN DE VILLIERS
It’s Thursday afternoon, so Semmy, Milisa and I head off to McDonald’s for our weekly treat – downsized from Big Macs to McChicken Regular Meals for reasons of austerity.
We first need to stop in at the Spar in Paddock Place on the edge of Smelly Marsh, the polluted estuary of the Diep River which is playing havoc with property values all along the Milnerton coast.
It’s 6:30, but Koeberg Road is choked with traffic. Not clear what it could be. Some blow-up at Dunoon? Multi-taxi pile-up? Veld fire?
Then I see two military helicopters blundering around over the bay, and I realise: it’s bloody SONA. They must have closed some roads, which has disrupted the afternoon commuter flow.
I feel a sudden, unreasoning, surge of anger. What grandiose shit is this anyway, I think bitterly – at this point, SONA isn’t worth the price of a held up trip to the supermarket.
The ANC had a shot and blew it, I think darkly. All this poncing around with flyovers, march-pasts and Napoleon salutes isn’t going to get us anywhere. It just costs money we don’t have. Even the GNU is too little, too late. We’re never going to make up for 30 years of wasted opportunities.
The drive back along Koeberg Road towards town is a bit easier, and we swing into our MacDee. A familiar routine follows.
First the squawk box – ‘areyoucollectingpontsforyourapp [whatever that means] or can I take your order?’
‘Three McChicken REGULAR MEALS, and DON’T try to upsize me without my noticing … and three Diet Cokes …’
On to the first window, tap card, get receipt.
Second window, where the magic is supposed to happen. But there’s a snafu – rather than somebody holding out two brown packets, a lady on the other side leans forward on her knuckles, looks at me sternly, and says: ‘Where’s your order? I don’t have an order.’
‘Whaddyamean, where’s our order?” I say, my already frazzled temper wearing even thinner. ‘We PAID at the first window and GOT A RECEIPT.’
I start scrambling around in the car for the receipt, which of course has gone missing.
But just as I’ve got my head deep into the left-hand footwell, I hear a voice behind me, saying triumphantly: ‘YOUR ORDER HAS JUST COME THROUGH !’ And there she is, holding out two brown paper bags, and wearing a big smile.
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Later on, I relent and take a peek at SONA. It actually seems quite different. There’s a warm and homely atmosphere, and people ululate when Cyril takes the stand. (All of this in the Cape Town City Hall. Remember, a few years ago, some nut with the acute insight of the deranged burnt down most of the houses of parliament.)
No dreaded ‘Madam Speaker, on a point of Order’ … shocking everybody witless and embarrassing the nation in front of the diplomats. Cyril’s speech also seems a bit simpler – maybe, I think, he’s got a new speechwriter as well to go with the GNU.
The start is unpromising. We need to chart a new path for our country, he intones, in a rapidly changing environment, marked by intensifying competition and other nasty trends that threaten small but intrepid developing countries. It sounds a bit like an advance excuse for continuing to mess things up.
Then some stuff about the enduring values of the freedom charter and how we all work together heroically to surmount our challenges, which I will skip over.
Next up, the GNU’s strategic priorities, namely inclusive growth and job creation; reducing poverty; and building a capable and ethical development state. (seriously?)
Same old, same old. But then the Pres starts to putting some flesh on the bones:
A system for getting better people into the civil service …
Reforming local government …
Infrastructure investment …
Reforming SOEs — among others to improve the delivrery of electricity and water …
Creating more jobs for youths …..
Finalising a ‘modernised and comprehensive industrial policy’ …
Investing in skills development …
Mother tongue bilingual education …
Improved training …
Better health care by preparing for the NHI’ … (this is a controversial bit, so I won’t go into it now);
Improvements to transport … fighting crime and corruption … foreign relations …
Maybe the usual shopping list, but somehow it seems more plausible. Is this the magic of the GNU starting to percolate through (which John Steenhuisen has been quick to claim in a media statement)?
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And then, veiled in deceptive simplicity, there are some really important passages. Among others, the media and ‘the boring and repetitive’ chorus have missed the following bit:
‘The Social Relief of Distress Grant is an essential mechanism for alleviating extreme poverty. We will use this grant as a basis for the introduction of a sustainable form of income support for unemployed people … ’
This, it seems to me, confirms that the government is going to introduce a Basic Income Grant. When this finally happens, it will be the most important thing since the introduction of the Child Support Grant in 1996, which, in turn, was far more important than giving everybody the vote two years before. (And yes … read that twice and smell the roses.)
And then there’s a fascinating passage about housing that casts light on a hugely opaque area of government policy in recent years. But I also won’t go into this now. I do intend to do so later.
It all sounds more and more plausible as the Pres goes along. Sheesh, I think – maybe this time, they’re gonna hack it … Or at least some of it …
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All of this has set me thinking. Given my advancing years, I’m all for simplifying things. Maybe, our politics is really like McDonald’s – or should be, anyway. At the squawk box, we place an order. At the first window, we pay, in the form of taxes, votes, and so on. And at the second, we collect our goods and services.
The sharp end of our McDonald’s — pay here, collect here. Own image.
Apparently, for something like a decade until quite recently, the Pres owned and operated 145 McDonald’s outlets. (Helpfully, he also sat on the Coca Cola board.) So this is what I think: if the GNU continues to struggle with delivery, maybe he should call on his old mates at the Milnerton McD and ask them how they retrieve a stuck order – especially, how they remind themselves that if they’ve taken your bucks, they need to produce the burgers.
By all means, come along Marine Drive, and smell the fresh sea air (heh heh). But don’t come in a blue light convoy – we won’t like it if we can’t get to our Spar.
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Featured image: President Cyril Ramaphosa arrives at the former Cape Town City Hall (now apparently known as the Parliamentary Precinct) for SONA 2025. Image: GCIS on Flickr.