Three Women and a Prediction

Written on the birthday of Colleen Taylor: 4 August 2025

One chilly July vac, while studying fine art at UNP, I spent 70c on a faded paperback found in a flea-market in Theatre Lane. It was Alberto Moravia's Two Women. I walked home, took to an armchair, and read it from cover to cover. It triggered so much in me that I recall very little else of that year other than reading that book.

Today, browsing YouTube, in particular Mike Sham's State of the Nation podcast, I came across interviews of two remarkable women. Beginning this on the birthday of my late sister, it could be that I was more susceptible to women today. I am glad of where my curiosity led me. These women are a vivid contrast with another Sham interviewee who said that investors could go to India, if they do not like our BEE constraints.

Woman Inventors

Designed by a man

Women who seek to emulate men lack ambition.

Department of General Hersov

Ministry of Women explodes Rob Hersov. What do they do DO? It's a good question: government is for all people, women are people, so why is there a special portfolio for women? And what DO they do? Hersov, a self-proclaimed capitalist activist, does not come across as a military man. They are usually as dry as dust, Hersov is more nuanced, but does at times bark like a sargeant-major. He would like to head up the Department of General Efficiency. Like Javier Milei, Hersov wants to see off half the cabinet, then add this DOGE. Well, at least he is thinking. Not many are. I don't often quote Juju, but I once enjoyed his quaint English, about Msholozi (spoken long after he had said he would die for the man). He said

Jacob Zuma does not have an idea.

In our current political climate, I see no innovation, no common sense, no fresh energy. These two women, watched on Sham's podcast, both exhibit a level of debate far out of reach of most males in the field.

Mandisa Mashego

In her interview with Mike Sham, Mandisa Mashego argued in a fair amount of detail the shortcomings she saw in the electoral act. Nobody else I have listened to, barring Bernardo, seems discontent with the act. Mashego picks its faults apart drastically. She deplores that it so easily accepts criminally tainted people to positions in political parties.

Government often brand themselves as the most, you know. as a shining example of transparency and accountability. it's not true.

Mashego makes no bones about her distaste for the Electoral Act. Apart from anything else, she says it is unconstitutional. In another interview, she also says

I just believe men should get off all leadership, like as soon as possible. We are in the crisis we are in today in the world because of men. We're in the economic crisis we are in because of men. We are in the political crisis vein because of men. We're in the post-covid depressed economic environment because of men. We are in a war situation in Europe because of men.

In the same interview, she says

The bottom line is ... like I said, public representatives should not be getting a salary! Finished! They can be rewarded, maybe given a pension or something. They do have a pension, but they should not be getting a salary. All public representatives must be subjected to criteria. That's another thing that we are fighting for in the new nation movement: not only was the entire electoral act declared unconstitutional!

My father did not regard polictics as a decent and honest occupation. For him, a politician was akin to a hobo. He doubted that music was a career, but was unsure - possibly useful, he mused, and loved singing and music, but career politicians? Useless. Definitely not a career, he would snort. In his mind a ward councillor was someone who took an evening walk after work, chatted with ratepayers, and reported. A messenger, nothing more. Why get paid for that? Surely it is an honour, if we have time on our hands, to work for improving our lives and our areas? You don't need to be an engineer to report potholes. You don't need to be an engineeer to fix them, even. Just ask residents all over SA, who are fed up waiting for municipalities to get off their butts, and spend weekends on it.

Lauren Evanthia Bernardo

Both women have clearly immersed themselves in systems and in the Electoral Act. Bernardo, after a while in gvernment and in the Democratic Alliance, was soon disillusioned with the system. Instead of moaning, she sat down, wrote a manifesto, designed a constitution, founded her own movement, and has stuck with her own DIY creation since its inception, eight years ago. She is not going to wander from party to party like some of our fickle malcontents!

In the OHM manifesto, she mentions changing the electoral act. Where Mashego limits her criticism to the Electoral Act, and believes fixing it will fix everything, Bernardo's broom sweeps much broader, getting rid of parties, provincial parliaments, and most of the cabinet. Things, she says, should devolve to local level. Devolve is a word Hersov uses, too. All in all, Hersov and the entire Biznews tribe are way behind Bernardo when it comes to slimming government down. Nearly every politician and commentator for more that a year is honing in on how expensive and ineffectual current government practice is, but none has the sweep of Bernardo. If I close my eyes and just listen, the picture soon emerges that this is the true system revolution. I find it a refreshing idea, and confess I want it done yesterday already. No more sheltered employment for talentless drones, please. As Ricardo Semler pointed out many times in his various books, democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as not having it. What we have is fubar.

Poli-what?

• POLICY
or
• POLICE

We are so adrift now of this original simplicity. Society has become too complex. POLICY can no longer be POLICED. Modern society illustrates a deadly truth:

If it is too hard, we are doing it wrong

We do not need that: just one look at the systems talent we have exported (start with the first African in space, Mark Shuttleworth, and with Elon Musk), make it clear we don't need no (UN) education. We can educate them, which, if we were to adopt Bernardo's plan, she believes we would. We will, if we can kick the party system to oblivion. Replacing the current mess with real democracy, and with a most important OHM plan, the ability to vote people out, will show the world how. OHM also wants us to choose from lists of preferred candidates, rated by citizens. What great thinking! How long would kortbroek have lasted?

Ms Evanthia is fluid and articulate. She knows her stuff backwards, and thus does tend toward verbal galloping. On the other hand, she is a sure-footed debater, seldom punctuating with "um". Do people say um to find time to think? How far would a musician get if s/he punctuated every second phrase with "um"?

Shosha um loza, um shosha um um loza
'ku um lezintaba um stimela um ihamba um South um um Afrika.

Politicians! Most of what you do is talk. Why not put some practice into it, as musicians do? Most instrument players gain most of their technique in three months of practice. I admire passion, but drama is still possible without serial umming. All it takes is to rehearse, in your vehicle on the way to your speech or interview, and to think of each word before you say it. The French and Dutch word for rehearsal is repetisie. Learn from music!

Unsung: Colleen Taylor

My sister would be 82 today. She left us thirty years ago, spared of the embarassment of seeing what our sorry platoons of men in suits have inflicted on us. She would agree with Mashego that it was indeed mainly men who wrought the mess. Like Bernardo, she had a tendency to speak very fast, though she was also not big on the um word. I hope Ms Bernardo slows down for us. Not everyone is a first language English listener: it can be hard to keep up.

Feminist or not, my sister would not have spared some of our female dolts. It's hard to choose which to award the prize, what with Myeni and SAA, Manto and our African potato, but I think there is a clear winner. Selling the entire country's petroleum reserves and then repurchasing them at a loss, all in twenty four hours, surely qualifies for the Mpara of the Century award, yet the perp got off scott free.

My sister was, in her saddest self-reflections, just a typist, but she and Ms Mashego would make a formidable operative team. Both knew/know how crucial administration is. My typist sister did a lot of work with lawyers, more especially related to mineworker cases. She had cut her admistrative teeth in Johburg in the Prichard St Legal Resources Cenre. It was she whom Halton Cheadle turned to and tasked with setting up the law firm when Wits Applied Law decided it was time that Cheadle, Thomson and Haysom should cease operating from Wits campus. For months, it was just she and three lawyers. She did all the typing, all the admin, all the catering, all the purchasing and the cashbook. everything except clean the place, though we all helped with that when the Branch bombed the place.

Labour law was just seeing the light of day. Before the law firm had conferenece rooms, they operated from first floor of a building whipped into shape with a coat of white paint and some Swazi grass mats, with computers scattered about on pine trestle tables. For conferences, NUM delegates including Cyril Ramaphosa and Kgalema Motlanthe often met in her house at 20 Hopkins St, Yeoville. The house itself was an apartheid safe house, with a pedigree of visitors and stretching from all five continents, including the ICJ. Barbara Hogan lived there after her release. It was an awe-inspiring place, and she managed to make things fun, too. For a few months, the African Jazz Pioneers rehearsed there. Bheki Mseleku lived there for years. An Operation Vula operative lived there in secret for months, undetected even by a bevy of resident learners.

For a mere typist, she got things done! Once a family friend, Frederick van Zyl Slabbert, had got things going with the various ANC toenadering meetings, Colleen was never far from frontline organisation. She took on the CODESA conferences, sharing the secretariat 50% with another firm.

It was Colleen who, deep in apartheid, persuaded a ritzy Braamfontein hotel to host the annual NUM conference, three years running. How did she swing that? She saw the gap, my china when a manager there related how much damage the Springbok rugby team had wrought over a weekend at the hotel. She figured the dapper Dutch manager for a betting man, and wagered that 850 NUM delegates would cause less damage than 30 Springboks. The bet was on, and she won. Braamfontein was suddenly surprised by an influx of 850 NUM delegates. Whites of white eyes were evident from passers-by! In the event, the 850 delegates left the hotel in far better nick than the 'boks did!. The manager said afterward

I don't want to say the unionists drank less than the boks. They put away mountains of it, but they were happy, peaceful drinkers!

My late sister was a known quantity: what you saw was what you got. Not content with getting an enormous amount done, she was fun, s fabulous host, and always the first on the dance floor.

I happened on an earlier podcast interview with Ms Mashego in her EFF days. She was a lot more cheerful, smiling readily and joking a little. That was two years ago. In this year's interviews, she comes across as much more serious, even stern, and impatient at times. I am not judging her. It's plain she really cares about SA: the plight she sees us in is no joke. I may as well say it too: she appears tired of stupid people. In the deepest, darkest days of apartheid, people of all groups stayed cheerful, and found a lot to laugh at. I like to think that with talents like these two remarkable women, better days are ahead. Somebody has to rescue us, and I pray that it never gets bad enough for them to lose their smiles and humour. There is nothing quite like the South African vibe. We all have it.