Paddy Harper: On gleeful politicians and headless chickens

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COMMENT

Monday.

There’s only seven days to go until the 1 November local government elections. 

I still haven’t decided who to vote for. 

There are 37 candidates standing in my ward: all the big parties, all the small ones and a whole load of independents 

None of them have popped past to ask me for my vote yet. Which would be nice: I  have absolutely no idea what most of them stand for. Then again, there’s a pretty good chance that most of them don’t know what they stand for either.

The Dagga Party (DP) hasn’t registered a candidate for my ward. Or in the eThekwini metro. 

Perhaps the comrades in the DP got too stoned and forgot to register anybody for Durban. 

Perhaps they spent the registration money on ganja..

Stranger things have happened.

It’s a pity though.

eThekwini could have done with an i-rie mayoral candidate, rather than the current crop of drab party hacks that is on offer.

Free cannabis for the elderly.

City sponsored commercial bud farms.

A dispensary in every ward.

Headless chickens 

My mind should be on the last week of campaigning by the political party heavyweights; the pollsters’ predictions; the logistics for the rest of the week and for voting day. It isn’t. I’m starving — more than usual — and my major concern right now is what to have for lunch.

I know it’s not going to be Nando’s. 

It’s not just because their chicken is dry and their wings cost an arm and a leg. Nando’s may have thrown Gareth Cliff under the bus over his racism and cut his funding, but for the moment, its particular brand of pre-election sauce is a little sour — right-wing actually — for my liking.

Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen appears to like the taste though. How else can interpret his gleeful endorsement of his host’s dismissal of the lived experience of the majority of our population as irrelevant?

Anecdotal.

The Nando’s team have been running around like headless chickens, trying to stop  themselves — and their money — from heading over the Cliff, along with Gareth. 

As they should.

John won’t.

Neither will the DA.