Award-winning columnist Bhekisisa Mncube advises the ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa to accept the co-operation offer from the Democratic Alliance but with a caveat: I’d work with you, Baas John, but not Gogo Zille.

Dear Mr President, His Excellency Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa. Today on your behalf, as is my wont, I am replying to the public offer from John Steenhuisen, the DA leader, on the possible political co-operation between our parties.

Dear Baas John. I confirm that you said you’re prepared to work with the ANC as long as I remain its leader. Furthermore, you promised never to support any motion of no confidence in me even if it was sponsored by an ANC faction such as the Radical Economic Transformation (RET) forces, the Economic Freedom Fighters or any other opposition party. You said you foresee a seismic shakedown of our politics on the horizon. I am impressed.

I was also pleasantly surprised that you opted for the cessation of hostilities during this epoch instead of the “fightback” policy of a bygone era. This is possibly the nicest thing you have said about me since you became the opposition leader.

Put differently, this is the nicest thing I have heard from the leader of any opposition party since our 1994 democratic breakthrough.

I hope your second wife is fine with this. From now on, you are my BFF. When am I coming for dinner? I am inviting you on to my WhatsApp as we speak.

Our friendship will last longer if we both refrain from raising personal matters: don’t comment on my English accent. In return, I will not raise the issue of your matric situation.

I was glad to hear that one of the conditions of our possible political-diplomatic ties with the DA is to exclude “our” mutual friends: DD “The Cat” Mabuza and ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule, the godfather of the RET forces. Let me publicly accept your offer of a political coalition on the condition that our imminent political nuptials exclude Gogo Helen Zille.

I think it’s only fair that both “our” frenemies be allowed to pursue their individual political futures unhindered by our coalition. As you put it, let’s work together as reformists across party lines to “lift SA out of the doldrums”.

Gogo Zille is better off in a retirement home tending to the garden and her grandchildren than putting out fires due to her twittering addiction.

At any rate, any politician who holds colonialists in high regard for the plunder and mass murder of our people has no place in the “rational political centre”, as you shrewdly put it. Since you announced the possibility of our political realignment, it has provided both our parties with the steepest learning curve in terms of possible unforeseen conundrums.

At the centre of the political quagmire is what to do with the conservatives and rebels on both sides. As you know, I tested the “political-working-together” waters last week.

In lieu of the possible creation of “a new rational centre” in our body politic, I responded in kind at the expense of our mutual enemy, Public Protector Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane.

I convinced the ANC top six to order our parliamentary caucus to vote in favour of the DA motion to remove the public protector from office.

It was an easy decision. Mkhwebane becomes our collective collateral damage in a war for a new kind of politics to emerge out of the ruins of the “nine lost years”.

Still, I can’t get over the television visuals showing you high-fiving your colleague after National Assembly Speaker Thandi Modise announced that the Mkhwebane vote favoured the “reformists”. For that unadulterated performance in front of the cameras, while Gogo Zille was watching, you deserve the national order of Mendi for Bravery in Platinum.

Go, Baas John, Go!

As we attempt to build the new political centre, let’s form three-a-side teams to create a new political manual to guide us into the future. These teams should focus on political morality (don’t touch other leaders’ wives), fundraising (only take money from the White Monopoly Capital), and electioneering strategy (focus on the poor).

These teams must work together to craft a future vision of the South African government in the post-realignment era, the rational centre state as it were.

As we both prepare for that high stakes poker game, come 2024, we must be ready to win friends, influence people and sideline enemies. We must win both on the swings and the roundabouts.

With best regards.

This Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu is written by Bhekisisa Mncube a former senior Witness political journalist, the 2020 regional winner in the Opinion category of the Vodacom Journalist of the Year Award, and author of The Love Diary of a Zulu Boy, a memoir.

This opinion piece was first published in the Witness and News24.