Entry into the Cape Town International Convention Centre last weekend was like the procession at a New Orleans jazz funeral: slow and laborious, but without the swing.
A troop of cops with sniffer dogs, metal detectors and other high-tech security paraphernalia slowed the process down. The reason: Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe was at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival.
Of all the stages set up for the festival, Rosies is the real heartbeat; home for the jazz purists, with its red seats, dreamy dim lighting and the best acoustics – a natural performance home for free jazz veteran drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo, accompanied by bassist Herbie Tsoaeli, saxophonist Sydney Mnisi, pianist Kyle Shepherd and vocalist Fany Galada. Moholo-Moholo demonstrated a dexterous handling of the drumsticks with a wide-grinned enjoyment of his playing, experimentation and solid showmanship.
Motlanthe was in the audience. We knew because an MC told us.
Without making too much of his facial hair, it made sense that the goateed deputy president went to Rosies. After World War II, the fashionable bearded chin was known as a "jazz goatee", after trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie's.
The following night Motlanthe was back at Rosies when legendary American drummer Jack DeJohnette partnered with his compatriots, Matt Garrison on bass and saxophonist Joe Lovano. DeJohnette on the drums is a visual feast; he does it with such effortless ease that it reminds one – to use a football analogy – of the Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho during his time at Barcelona.
About 40 people walked out. It wasn't easy listening; dissonant soundscapes, interrupted codas and sonic yelps might be too much for an unpractised ear – it's a thinking person's music. On that night, I sat at the back of the auditorium; I didn't see officials depart en masse with the swagger one associates with power. If I had looked closely, I imagine, I would have seen the goateed deputy prez soaking up the free jazz.
Intellectual tastes
Motlanthe is not the only leader with intellectual tastes.
When the late Venezuela president Hugo Chávez waved Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance as he delivered a speech at the United Nations, it quickly became a bestseller. Metropolitan Books had to print an extra 25 000 copies.
Likewise, United States President Barack Obama. He once stopped at a bookshop to buy To Kill A Mocking Bird by Harper Lee and The Red Pony by John Steinbeck for his daughters. Finding an advance copy of Freedom, then the latest novel by Jonathan Franzen, Obama also bought it. In October 2010 the literary communion became personal when Franzen had a private meeting with Obama at the White House.
But the example set by the late France's president François Mitterand is perhaps the most fascinating. Soon after getting into office, he granted citizenship to the Czech writer Milan Kundera and the Argentinian novelist Julio Cortázar, who had long wanted to be French nationals.
But the American writer William Styron isn't convinced by the romanticism of an intellectual president. He argues that "the quality of being intellectual does not guarantee excellence or even competence in a political leader". Africans should know: we have had a fair amount of intellectual presidents who proved to be less than effectual.
Back to the jazz front: at the time of going to press it wasn't clear whether Moholo-Moholo's and DeJohnette's CDs had sold out after getting the Motlanthe nod.
No breath-holding, though.