QUOTABLE QUOTES - TAKING THE PISS
The next floor-crossing window is scheduled for September. It will see a two week window period open in which local, provincial and national public representatives can join other parties without losing their seats. It’s about as ugly as politics gets.
Floor crossing window periods are usually marked by the most tortuous explanations, as floor-crossers desperately try to explain to a disillusioned and disgusted public why they changed their values and principles and suddenly decided to embrace a whole new vision – and why that was the right thing to do.
Usually the argument goes like this: the party I am with has abandoned the principles I once held true, so I am joining another party where I can be true to myself and those principles.
Of course various logical problems start to surface when that person is asked to (a) provide evidence of the abandonment to which he or she is referring to (usually, it boils down to them not getting a salary raise or some such thing) and (b) how it is they are able to reconcile the fact that the party they are joining is actually at the other of the spectrum when it comes to principles and values (the most common response being outright denial and an insistence that the IFP and the ANC, for example, are pretty much the same thing, or whatever).
And all of this double-talk is usually masked in the most verbose, evasive and complex language, in an attempt to avoid any real scrutiny.
So you can imagine how refreshing it was, while trawling through the archives, to stumble across the following quote from former PAC member Max Nemadzivhanani, explaining his decision to cross the floor and join the ANC in 2004:
“I have joined a mature party that spends its time serving the community rather than on wrangling. I am experienced in legislature work and ready for the new challenge. I want to serve in the ANC as it acknowledges me and gave me the opportunity to serve the people.”
So far so good, now the clincher:
“There is a tendency by the members of opposition movements to sit outside and urinate on the ANC’s political tent, so I want to sit in the ANC tent and urinate outside against poverty, diseases and homelessness.”
Enough said.
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| Posted on 6/6/2007
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