When Julius Malema during his Aljazeera interview made a call to take up arms should the 2016 local elections be rigged as he and the reds believe the 2014 election in which his party deputed nation wide were rigged he did two things on an international platform. Whether wittingly or unwittingly we will find out one day, however on the one hand ahead of the reds, Economic Freedom Fighters, local election manifesto launch he called attention to his political party so that the media’s attention could on 30 April train its sights on him which will give him the publicity he needs and on the other hand he let his guard off and revealed the true nature of the kind of a leader he is or the kind of a political party he presides over. He has, as the epitome of the reds, reminded us that he is not prepared to work and carve out a future for this country as a moderate and crowd pleaser within the realm of multiracialism. Suddenly the cool cat that we saw during the campaign to impeach the president at the stoop of parliament was gone. Malema stands for the dispossessed, the black populace, to be specific – the youth – the young people who constitute the constituency let down by the occupants of the center of power ∇

The reds’ position is worrisome in the conscience of the struggling young middle class who might feel alienated by the occupants of the center of power in the person of the African National Congress as it only looks out for people connected to it through patronage. Under its leadership our country has become a country wherein many feel hard work does not really pay. If you do not have connections you are working hard in vain. This group of young people are also part of a class of people within our social stratagem who have come to be known as the missing middle. This part of our nation does not qualify for government aid in terms of social grants or RDP housing and at the same time they cannot be compared to the upper class in that they do not qualify for the benefits that the upper class qualify for. It is a floating group albeit somewhat envied by the disenfranchised youth that the reds has proclaim to represent the interests off.

»In the modern age an average person who is a hard worker and is honest is not prepared to relinquish the fruits of their labor through an act of war that could see everything as it is smote away at a blink of an eye unless if they are reduced to self pity«

Presently the policy of the Economic Freedom Fighters which promises to wipe everything that our nation has worked hard for over the last two decades in this country through socialism or warfare if need be does not connect with them because they do not share the social realism that is shared by the disenfranchised youth who are poor, frustrated and at a whim might be seduced by a call to arms and serve as cadres in an unnecessary war. This leaves Mmusi Maimane’s Democratic Alliance a space to exploit a grouping that still needs a push to ‘arrive’ at a better life. I will conclude my meditation by focusing on the DA below.

For the center of power to go back to a time wherein all was going well and everybody loved its leadership it will have to search for its lost compass and realize that it cannot wave the ‘political liberation’ card forever because it has lost its charm. It will have to identify and isolate the modern problems that the country is facing and mercilessly root them out in order to regain the respect that it once commanded. The ‘missing middle’ would like to be part of locating and implementing solutions but it is barred due to lack of opportunities even after improving itself.

On average a person who finished their degree last year (2015) and have entered the job market in 2016 would roughly be about 22 years old. Having finished matric in 2012 at about 18 years they have spent the last three years working hard and hoping that they will have a smooth sail when they enter the job market only to find out that it would not be that easy. They are the ‘education blacks, the clever backs’ as they have derogatory come to be known. Over the long period of much toil the rhetoric of EFF will find fertile ground in their hearts and minds as they long for prosperity. Mostly this so called educated group may find the Democratic Alliance ideology – of equal opportunity for all and abolishing of cronyism appealing. But there is something missing in it. That is the guaranteed continued development of the black populace in South Africa.

The problem of the blues, the Democratic Alliance, is that while their ideology of equal opportunity for all and abolishment of cronyism is sound they cannot wish away the fact that in order to have an outright win of the black hearts and minds and eventually, votes come 3 August, they will have to be committed to the cause of continuing to lift black people out of poverty. A cause that seem to have been abandoned by the occupant of the center of power and a cold fact that cannot be wished away by convenient liberalism. They cannot wish away the disparities that our democracy has inherited and has struggled to address. In order to move forward logic must take precedence. The advantage of supporting the ‘missing middle’ is that the occupants of the center of power will begin to grow a section of our nation that can serve as a buffer zone between the have and have not. By creating opportunities of employment or job creation an ideal political party would increase tax revenue base and begin to address the plight of the poor through it while reducing dependency as it lifts its own people. The DA’s answer to South Africa’s problem does not lie in check mating the center of power’s faults but through an ideological sacrifice that could see it speak to the alienated South African by touching the sentiments of our nation which at the moment needs an answer and very fast for that matter. Otherwise the allure of war professed by the reds will take precedence and we can only imagine what kind of a ruling party we will have in our hands should the reds ascend into power. Clue: in the modern age an average person who is a hard worker and is honest is not prepared to relinquish the fruits of their labor through an act of war that could see everything as it is smote away at a blink of an eye unless if they are reduced to self pity•

Autumn

29 April

© mmutle arthur kgokong 2016