Foot in mouth — politicians talk sh#t while South Africans live in it

South African politics has acquired an occupational hazard more reliable than coalition collapse: the foot in the mouth. It is not enough for our public representatives to disappoint us through unfunded budgets, sewerage spills, broken promises and municipal decay. Increasingly, they add a soundtrack.

The latest instalment came from Water and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina, who, during a community engagement in Kouga this week, traded a vulgar insult with a resident being removed from the venue. The resident hurled “jou ma se p#@s” at her; the minister replied in kind. For a Cabinet minister, it was a spectacular loss of restraint. For South African satire, the location was indecently generous: the confrontation followed the launch of an upgraded sewer pump station.

You could not manufacture the symbolism without being accused of overwriting. The minister responsible for water and sanitation was at a sewerage facility, verbally descending into the sewer. Yet Majodina is merely the newest member of a crowded national club. Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero recently lost his temper during a service-delivery meeting in Tshepisong, after a resident called him a criminal. Morero denied the accusation, as he was entitled to do, before deciding mayoral dignity was overrated and telling the resident, in effect, that he was “talking sh#t”. He later apologised. South Africa moved on. The foot was extracted from the mouth, wiped on a press statement and prepared for its next appearance.

These incidents should not be treated as isolated bloopers, because the language reveals how political power has come to regard the people who confer it. In 2021, ANC politicians Loyiso Masuku and Faith Mazibuko were caught on video eating amanqina, chicken feet, during a campaign stop. Masuku was heard saying “for the sake of the vote”, while the group spoke about buying up the chicken feet. Both later apologised and denied mocking voters or trying to buy votes. Context matters, but politics is also theatre. The image that remained was of politicians briefly entering the circumstances of ordinary people, camera rolling, before returning to the comfort of office.

A few years earlier, Nomvula Mokonyane supplied an even purer specimen. As Gauteng premier in 2013, she told angry Bekkersdal residents that the ANC did not need their “dirty votes”. The residents were protesting over poor service delivery. There is something almost majestic about the inversion: people whose taxes finance government and whose votes create governments were informed that their democratic currency was dirty. Mokonyane tried to apologise, but the phrase survived because contempt has an excellent memory. Politicians forget what they say; citizens remember what power sounds like when it loses patience with them.

Nor is this an ANC genetic disorder. Former DA leader John Steenhuisen provided his own entry in 2022 when, during an appearance on Podcast and Chill, he was asked what “roadkill” meant. He said it sounded like his ex-wife and added “flat chicken”. The remark prevents the lazy conclusion that vulgarity belongs to one party: different colours, same shoe.

At moments, our political recruitment system resembles an experiment in elevating some of the least self-aware, least capable and least likeable among us, handing them microphones and acting surprised when they reveal what they think of the public. They live off the public purse and depend on the public vote, yet can behave as though the public is an interruption to being important.

Adding insult to insult

Perhaps none of this would matter much if the country surrounding the vulgarity worked. A rude mayor in a clean, functioning city is merely a rude mayor. Here, however, citizens are insulted in both language and material circumstance. The Auditor-General of South Africa reported that only 39 of 257 municipalities – 15% – achieved clean audits in 2024/25, while the performance of the eight metropolitan municipalities continued to deteriorate. That is not an abstract governance failure. It is the institutional biography of potholes, dry taps, sewage, dark streets and rubbish that waits longer for collection than politicians wait for elections.

Consider Emfuleni. Residents have spent years living with raw sewage flowing through streets and around homes. In April this year, the Sowetan newspaper reported sewage running through Tshepong, alongside a dumping site, with residents describing illness, unbearable smells and years of unanswered complaints.

In June, the Sunday Times reported that sewage and rubbish still lined parts of Boipatong despite tens of millions of rands allocated to sewer infrastructure.

In Makana, the South African Human Rights Commission said it had received more than 30 complaints between 2023 and 2026 concerning water outages, sewage spillages, sanitation failures and deteriorating infrastructure, and found systemic human rights violations in the municipality's water and sanitation crisis.

Then there is the rubbish. Johannesburg, whose mayor recently informed a resident that he was talking sh#t, spent parts of this year with uncollected waste piling up as Pikitup struggled with labour disputes, ageing trucks and financial constraints.

Gqeberha residents described foul-smelling heaps of uncollected refuse near homes and places where children play. Metsimaholo residents complained of weeks without collections, while refuse piled up in Msunduzi during a strike. This is why the phrase “government treats us like sh#t” no longer works comfortably as a metaphor. In too many municipalities, the evidence is olfactory. Citizens are not merely spoken down to; they are expected to step around what the state has failed to remove.

The important distinction is that public representatives are also human beings. They may be insulted, provoked and falsely accused, and no democratic principle requires a minister or mayor to enjoy abuse. But public office requires greater restraint than the crowd. If you want the title “Honourable”, the salary, bodyguards, motorcade and microphone, you inherit the obligation to remain more honourable than the angriest person in the hall. The citizen may lose his temper. The state cannot. Power that answers insult with insult is not demonstrating strength; it is admitting that, stripped of office and protocol, it has no better vocabulary than the man it is ejecting.

Political contempt

The deeper obscenity, then, is not the swear word. South Africans swear fluently and often in several languages before breakfast. The obscenity is political contempt dressed as entitlement: the notion that voters should be grateful for a visit, a food parcel, a repaired transformer, or a ministerial appearance, as though these were gifts rather than services financed by citizens.

Residents are expected to speak nicely to power even while sewage passes their gates, bins ferment on pavements and electricity disappears. Respect, in a democracy, is not ceremonial. Respect is water from the tap, refuse removed on schedule, a sewer that stays underground and an official who can hear an insult without becoming one. At some point the conclusion is not merely that government treats people like shit, but that large parts of our political establishment are themselves full of it.

That is why “foot in the mouth” is more than a collection of viral videos. It is becoming an organising principle of our political establishment. Chicken feet for the vote. Dirty votes in Bekkersdal. A flat chicken on a podcast. “Talking sh#t” at an electricity meeting. “Jou ma se p@#s” at a sewer pump station. 

The language changes, but the hierarchy underneath it remains remarkably stable: the politician is important; the citizen is inconvenient. Yet our representatives should remember that voters have feet too. They use them to queue at polling stations, and then they use their hands to put a cross next to a name. After years of being talked down to while living amid political failure, South Africans may decide that the most useful foot is the one shown to politicians on their way out. DM