Foot in mouth — politicians talk sh#t while South Africans live in it

Decaying municipalities, dry taps and raw sewage are now matched by public representatives’ open insolence, proving that political failure in South Africa is matched by profound contempt.

Bhekisisa Mncube is an author and columnist who won the national 2024 Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Award for columns/editorials, as well as the same category at the regional 2020 Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards.

South African politics has acquired an occupational hazard more reliable than coalition collapse: the foot in the mouth. It is not enough for our public representatives to disappoint us through unfunded budgets, sewerage spills, broken promises and municipal decay. Increasingly, they add a soundtrack.

The latest instalment came from Water and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina, who, during a community engagement in Kouga this week , traded a vulgar insult with a resident being removed from the venue. The resident hurled “ jou ma se p#@s ” at her; the minister replied in kind. For a Cabinet minister, it was a spectacular loss of restraint. For South African satire, the location was indecently generous: the confrontation followed the launch of an upgraded sewer pump station.

You could not manufacture the symbolism without being accused of overwriting. The minister responsible for water and sanitation was at a sewerage facility, verbally descending into the sewer. Yet Majodina is merely the newest member of a crowded national club. Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero recently lost his temper during a service-delivery meeting in Tshepisong, after a resident called him a criminal. Morero denied the accusation, as he was entitled to do, before deciding mayoral dignity was overrated and telling the resident, in effect, that he was “talking sh#t”. He later apologised . South Africa moved on. The foot was extracted from the mouth, wiped on a press statement and prepared for its next appearance.

These incidents should not be treated as isolated bloopers, because the language reveals how political power has come to regard the people who confer it. In 2021, ANC politicians Loyiso Masuku and Faith Mazibuko were caught on video eating amanqina, chicken feet , during a campaign stop. Masuku was heard saying “for the sake of the vote”, while the group spoke about buying up the chicken feet. Both later apologised and denied mocking voters or trying to buy votes. Context matters, but politics is also theatre. The image that remained was of politicians briefly entering the circumstances of ordinary people, camera rolling, before returning to the comfort of office.

A few years earlier, Nomvula Mokonyane supplied an even purer specimen. As Gauteng premier in 2013, she told angry Bekkersdal residents that the ANC did not need their “ dirty votes ”. The residents were protesting over poor service delivery. There is something almost majestic about the inversion: people whose taxes finance government and whose votes create governments were informed that their democratic currency was dirty. Mokonyane tried to apologise, but the phrase survived because contempt has an excellent memory.