Old battlegrounds show where voters’ hearts lie

A brilliant guide once showed an Irishman and me around the field of slaughter at Isandlwana. 

The top of the sphinx-like mountain that dominates the battleground was covered in mist, and the chill on the skin wasn’t just from the drizzle.

The guide, whose great-great-grandfather commanded a Zulu regiment that hot January morning in 1879, pointed to the surrounding hills and the valley below the mountain, where the redcoats were swept away during the battle.

Then, alluding in a roundabout way to a recent election, he said that to the people in the valley it hadn’t made a difference then who was in power in the Union Buildings. The only thing that had mattered to them were the alliances, the power and the feuds that decided the politics locally. 

It did not seem to us that the governing party had ever held much sway in the neighbourhood or that it possibly ever would.

Which is why the alleged attack on ANC supporters on their way to a rally in Nongoma in northern KwaZulu-Natal over the weekend does not sound, well, new. 

Because now, as then, the politics around Nongoma (as around Isandlwana) are decided on the ground — and in the hills and valleys — as they have been for generations, not by the wishful thinking of flag-waving rally organisers.

Which brings us to the (apparent) rise of the MK Party, which claims to be on track to wrestle KZN out of the governing party’s feeble grasp on May 29.

Certainly the new party has youth, vigour, anger and hunger on its side, where the ANC has flags and hollow promises. 

The MK Party is also saddled with a name and a logo which perhaps link it to the governing party in ways that probably irritate both of them.

And all the while the battle for these hills will be decided … on the hills.