Africa Muslim Party 'full of hate'
15/02/2006 08:54  - (SA)  

One of the AMP's election campaign posters. (Chris Roper)

If political parties were tabloid newspapers, the Africa Muslim Party would be The Daily Voice. Both know their market, and they're not in the business of confusing that market by giving them nuanced messages or unnecessarily complicated propositions.

So the Africa Muslim Party (AMP) appeals directly to the intellect of its potential voters with the nicely judged clarion call, "Bring Back the Death Penalty". By "intellect", I mean bloodthirsty idiocy, and by "nicely judged", I mean just plain silly.

Interestingly, AMP appears to be using the exact same poster that it used in the last elections. Why change a whinging formula, I guess.

In much the same way, The Daily Voice is providing Dina Rodrigues, the alleged murderess of baby Jordan-Leigh, as a sacrificial offering for their ravening readers.

Why, just yesterday, according to The Daily Voice's front page, they caught Rodrigues in the act of winking. Yes, winking! "Is there no end to her evil?", I can imagine The Daily Voice readers exclaiming.

If only AMP and The Daily Voice could get together! Imagine the posters! Bring back the Death Penalty So That We Can Kill Dina. Now I just KNOW we lovely Capetonians would vote for that party, wouldn't we?

And the thing about the Africa Muslim Party is that they're not limited in the scope and breadth of their political aims, no indeedy. One of their other posters lays it on the line for voters. I quote verbatim:

"A vote for the Muslim Party will be a reward for you in this life and there after. If your vote goes for a non-Muslim and they give gay rights, you share in the sin. Vote AMP."

This call to action does rather presuppose that they're not expecting many non-Muslims to vote for them, and they're certainly not cultivating the gay vote either. Mind you, given their less than glowing elections record, they can't be expecting many Muslims to vote for them either.

The AMP's elections record

In 1994, in our first democratic elections after that period of apartheid rule that AMP look back on so fondly (remember, when we still had the death penalty), AMP recorded 47 690 votes, or less than one percent of the total vote.

In the 2004 election, AMP were still hanging in there on a Hang the People Who Aren't Like Us ticket, and they only got a measly 34 446 votes, or around 0.20 percent of the total vote count.

If you're looking for perspective here, consider that The Daily Voice probably sells about three times as many newspapers a day as AMP gets votes in a general election.

Honestly, I don't know why AMP bother. And when you think of the crudeness of their political manifesto, you have to wonder that they're even allowed to carry on trying. Their electioneering must dangerously skirt the definition of hate speech.

I'm not an expert on theological cause and effect, but can it really be true that a vote for Helen GodZille of the Democratic Allsorts (don't let her rampage through our city, people!), on the grounds of her economic manifesto, will condemn you as a sinner just because her party also advocates gay rights?

That's just sick. But it's the kind of religious aggression that kept the Taliban and the Catholic church in power for so long, and Manchester United at the top of the Premier League. So we mustn't be unaware of its potentially disastrous effects.

It occurs to me that my regular readers will be wondering why I haven't made up a parody name for the Africa Muslim Party, in the same way that I did for the Democratic Alliance (Democratic Allsorts), the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDC), or the African National Congress (Alleged National Congress) in a previous column.

Is it because I fear being treated like some sort of second-rate idiot Danish cartoonist? No, it's not that.

It's because I find the Africa Muslim Party deeply unfunny. They aren't even worthy of being satirised. The Africa Muslim Party is built entirely on hate, and it's a kind of hate we haven't seen in these parts for a while.

That's the best part about elections. All the cuckoos come out of the political clock to remind us that, just because the clock is ticking over nicely, it doesn't mean that its inner workings aren't flawed.