Johannesburg- It’s been a slow burn.
Pundits claim the tectonic shift in voting patterns that saw the ANC lose a treble of metro municipalities was a long time coming.
The annoyance and anger with the governing ANC culminated in opposition parties voting together to elbow the ANC out of power in Gauteng.
While the trend emerged five years ago, it was a whitewash this time around as the party of Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela were left licking its wounds after the voters rejected it tentatively.
The shoddy service delivery and endless corruption scandals finally put the nail in the coffin of the party of Ace Magashule, Jacob Zuma and Mosebenzi Zwane.
The headline writers were unforgiving as they went for the jugular in describing the current events.
They used words like a whitewash, a bloodied nose and bloodbath to describe the defeat of the once-mighty ANC.
Its supporters were inconsolable when they realised they were relegated to the rural periphery with insignificant political-economic influence.
Tenderpreneurs quivered in their boots as they contemplated the next five years.
The ANC has been emasculated, annihilated and vanquished.
How it will claw back the power it lost is up in the air as the party struggles to remain relevant.
The headlines made the Straight & 2 Beers team contemplate and reimagine other improbable headlines during these crazy times.
Imagine waking up to the headlines that Zuma is appearing in court and has decided to tell the truth and nothing but the truth with regard to the arms deal and state capture.
“Zuma told the media outside the Pietermaritzburg High Court that he was tired of delaying and ducking and he planned to take the court and the public in his confidence in a tell-all tale of intrigue, greed and betrayal.”
Would that not be something that would blow the lid off the speculation of the last decade-and-a-half?
Another one: Eskom keeps the lights on. Power utility COO Pula Ramashala said load-shedding was history after Eskom kept its coal dry during the rainy season.
The one headline the rest of the world would like to see right now is the one heralding the decimation of Covid-19.
In our crime-infested country, wouldn’t it thump our chests to read that the police force had been cleansed of officers with criminal records?
The news that many of our men and women in blue have criminal records has sucked our confidence in them.
Last but not least, imagine a headline screaming: Tokoloshe, SA’s leading social media app, eclipses Facebook and Twitter.
We can only dream.
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