Extract

So I get this WhatsApp message on Friday from a friend, out of the blue: “I think that DA would enter into an alliance with ANC should ANC be below 50%. Maybe I am wrong. But more importantly, I think to reward the ANC with a super majority after what they have done to the country sends the ANC the wrong message.”

This is my own fault. I first raised the prospect of ageing white males like me, normally secure DA fodder, voting for the ANC in the upcoming election in order to bolster Cyril Ramaphosa’s political position and perhaps, that way, help keep the wolves of corruption and rent-seeking in his own party away from bringing him down. The mere notion caused a reflexive uproar, perhaps best epitomised by an incoherent article in December 2019 by Gabriel Crouse of the SA Institute for Race Relations (IRR), in which he says I “enjoyed a high profile last year [2017] as the foremost champion of Jacques Pauw’s book, The President’s Keepers”. Huh? I have had a high profile for 20 years. Crouse then criticises the marketing of Pauw’s book, which I had nothing to do with, for failing to point out how all the bad guys in it were black (is this really the IRR today?) and then says, idiotically, that “as Pauw’s foremost cheerleader [which I was not] I lay some blame at Bruce’s door for the fact that ...

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