Strings Attached: A Political Party Is Gatvol With a Puppet

By Themba Khumalo

There are people whose brains are made of gutter mud, which is unfair to the gutter mud, because at least mud knows when to stay put.

Most of us were issued grey matter. These people were issued damp silt of old grudges and cigarette ends, where only the sediment ever stirs, and a puppet just stirred it.

They have the social skills of a dynamite stick and the temper of a limpet mine, and their frayed emotions march them, flags flying, into an argument with a puppet.

I find it hilariously worrying that supporters of the FF Plus are gatvol with Chester Missing because, in that famously satirical tongue of his, he took a few pot-shots at the party leader.

This is the same Chester who became the first puppet ever taken to court, and then made world news as the first puppet in history to win a court case, after Steve Hofmeyr’s camp was daft enough to haul him before a magistrate in 2014 over a Twitter row in which Chester had denounced Hofmeyr as a racist.

Chester has faced the full might of the law and left with his stuffing intact.

Yet on 4 October, when Chester posted a video taking potshots at the FF Plus and its leader, somewhere in the Freedom Front’s more combustible corners, fully grown adults with bakkies, mortgages and voters’ roll numbers looked at a hand puppet and thought: this one demands a statement.

That was over two weeks ago. The members have not recovered. The rage is now on steroids, with a brandy-and-Coke to keep it company, which is not so much a mood as a chemical weapon with a Spar receipt.

SERIOUSLY, you fancy yourself a reasonably average person, and you have the time, the energy and the blood pressure to rage against a puppet? There are potholes in this country wide enough to host a weekend braai. There are municipalities whose idea of service delivery is a rumour. There is a tender somewhere with your name on it, and you are drafting rebuttals to a puppet with a better CV than half the Cabinet.

Some people must really have fallen on their heads, repeatedly, and the head went soft on impact. Like a peach. A very angry peach, with a Wi-Fi connection.

Now, in fairness, one unhappy camper did write a proper post, and it deserves to be quoted in full, if only because it is so much more polite than the mood that produced it:

“Chester, ‘freedom for whom?’ deserves a serious answer: every South African. Satire is your right. But if you accuse the VF Plus of racism, identify the specific policy or statement and explain your objection. That gives us something substantive to debate. As a candidate, I stand for safe communities, functioning services and equal treatment before the law, regardless of race. Judge me by my words, my conduct and how I serve people. I am willing to answer questions and hear criticism. You have every right to challenge us, and I have every right to challenge your argument. Voetsek answers none of these questions. Let’s debate the substance. Our communities deserve dignity, accountability and solutions…”

Lovely. Measured. Statesmanlike, even. One small snag: it is addressed to a puppet.

Picture the scene. A candidate stands at the lectern, notes alphabetised, waiting for a reply from a puppet with eyebrows. “Identify the specific policy,” he says, to a creature whose entire policy platform is get me out of this suitcase. “Let us debate the substance.” The substance, I regret to report, is mostly polyester.

Not every camper was so statesmanlike. Another, clearly sipping a brandy-and-Coke with a generous sprinkling of anger steroids, offered a theatre review from the cheap seats of Facebook:

“You a white Afrikaner yourself, you were a failed performer at the Afrikaner kunstefees, you are not funny at all, zero satire, fuelling hate and simply now pathetic, dated and an irrelevant attempt at remaining relevant! Voetsek asb oom.”

Give that a moment. “Zero satire,” says the man who has spent eighteen days seething, and finally responding to it. A joke that truly failed gets a scroll and a yawn. It does not get a fortnight of sleeplessness and a full critical appraisal with a career history attached. He has even checked the puppet’s ethnicity, which is brave of him, since the puppet’s papers are felt. And “an irrelevant attempt at remaining relevant” is a sentence that eats its own tail, delivered to a puppet who is being discussed at braais, in comment sections and now in this column. If that is irrelevance, I would like some.

But note the closing flourish: Voetsek asb oom. He added “please.” Even in full cry, with the brandy kicking, the man minded his manners. Voetsek, but politely. It is the one civilised thing in the whole saga, and I salute it.

And yes, “voetsek” is not an argument. It is a full stop with attitude. But it is also what you say to the dog at the bins, and as a review of the political genre it is not unfair. Satire does not file a motion, attach annexures or request a postponement. It points at the emperor’s trousers and shouts. The correct response is to laugh, or to say something funnier. The incorrect response is a rebuttal with a heart emoji and a flag, which is how you lose an argument and your dignity in a single post.

Besides, consider the scoreboard. Every politician in this country has been called worse by their own coalition partners before breakfast. Chester merely did it with a better agent.

My real concern, and I say this with the sincerity of a man who has watched too much news, is what comes next. I hope and pray that the rage against Chester Missing does not drive these good people to phone that Orange man across the Atlantic and tell him that the persecution has now been worsened by a hateful puppet. We all know how that story ends. A map with arrows. A sofa briefing in which a world leader learns that the great enemy of the Afrikaner is a puppet from Cape Town. Somewhere in Washington an aide whispers, “Sir, I believe it is a puppet.” And the Orange man, bless him, sanctions the puppet anyway.

So here is some free advice, the only kind this column has ever offered. If a puppet can rattle you, the problem is not the puppet. If your politics cannot survive a joke, it was never a politics, only a house of cards with a flag on top. The strongest people in public life are the ones who can be mocked and carry on. The weakest need social media posts for every raspberry.

Chester will be back, because the hand never leaves. The only open question is whether you will be waiting with a bakkie-load of rage or with a sense of humour.

I know which one is lighter to carry. It also fits in a suitcase.