If you thought our politicians would take a long, hard look at themselves in the mirror post-SONA and realise they behaved like children you would be wrong. If you thought the name-calling would slow down, you would be wrong. If you thought the circus would roll on and gather momentum…congrats, you have hit the nail on the head.

In what is an eerie throwback to the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi people in 1994, National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete has called Julius Malema a ‘cockroach’. This from Business Day:

Ms Mbete was quoted as having said ANC deployees must work hard and defeat the EFF. “If we don’t work we will continue to have cockroaches like Malema roaming all over the place”.

Now name-calling is nothing new but the use of the word ‘cockroach’ should make one shudder. This is exactly the kind of rhetoric Rwandan leaders used during their propaganda campaign to incite violence against certain ethnic groups in their country and we all know how that ended.

Now opposition parties have rallied together in protest and are considering trying to get a court interdict to prevent Mbete from chairing Tuesday’s debate over the contents of Zuma’s SONA address. They may have a case too, although nothing should surprise us anymore. Business Day again:

Constitutional expert Shadrack Gutto said an interdict against the speaker “ought to be tested because her comments were unbecoming and contradicted the role that she occupies as the speaker”.

Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m sure presidents ought not to steal over R200 million from their citizens and then dodge questions on the matter for months on end. The mind boggles.

[source:businessday]