Politics.za

Coda takes a look at some political parties and finds most are more “eish” than “kief”.

And security holes abound as well.

Cape Town. January 2006. You’re the official opposition. Local municipal elections are two short months away and you might actually have a chance at winning control over a major metropolitan municipality thereby giving yourself some much needed authority and proving to people you can actually govern before the next national elections.

You might have a chance that is, if your local membership weren’t infighting like schoolgirls.

• As expected Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel gets top marks – 8/10.
• And also as expected Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalang Msimang gets a big fat zero.
• Suprisingly Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri gets a 5, which frankly is 4 points too much. It took 4 years to get the SNO licensed (and it won’t be up and running for at least 6-9 months), ICASA is a mess and toothless and Telkom is ripping the public off as best they can. I refer you to myBroadband for the gory details.
• Minister of Tourism and Environmental Affairs Marthinus ‘Kortbroek’ Van Schalkwyk gets a respectable 6/10 mainly for environmental achievements. Tourism is still strong but with the highly publicised recent attacks on tourists in Cape Town he better keep his eye on the ball.
• Minister of Transport Jeff Radebe’s score held steady at 4/10 despite MetroRail still being unsafe and unreliable, traffic gridlock beginning to choke Cape Town and Johannesburg, taxi recapitalisation still nowhere to be seen and of course, Gautrain.
• Minister of Science Mosibudi Mangena score increased to 7/10 mainly thanks to the SALT telescope. But that’s something that won’t affect many actual South Africans and the continuing (and alarming) lack of skills in science in engineering in South Africa should have lead to a much lower score.

Knowing that the ANC will do whatever they can to piss off the DA, Trevor Manuel must be feeling his chance of going all the way to the presidency is getting slimmer and slimmer with every arrival of the DA weekly email newsletter.

Manuel is one of the few ANC top dogs to get praise from the DA and this weeks newsletter was no different, first starting off with a hearty congrats for getting GDP growth to 5.1% and then copiously quoting Manuel as if he was Helen Suzman guiding the DA down the correct path to take.

If Manuel is ever overlooked by the ANC in the presidential succession battle you can be damn sure that the DA will be sending non-stop gift baskets and flowers to the Manuel-Ramos household trying to get Manuel to jump to the DA. Not that it will ever happen but even Tony Leon’s got to have a dream right?

And his list of potential successors is rather lean at the moment.