Bafana Khumalo Native tongue
‘Things are bad, B-man, I am telling you. They really are.” The man in the business suit took a slug of a three-finger scotch and lit me a cigarette. “White folks should not be behaving like this, productivity will be at an all-time low with this Rugby World Cup thing.
“Already there are reports that attendance by white managers is expected to plummet,” said the man as his eyes begged for advice from my well of wisdom. “This, of course, is expected to exacerbate our already low productivity levels.”
I was talking to my main man T-man, the M of L, that’s the Minister of Labour Tito Mboweni. I was passing through Parliament, wondering what I should do with my time, seeing I can no longer drop in on the mother of my nation. T-man called me into his office and started pouring his heart out. “I hope natives don’t succumb to such negative influences.
“They have certainly showed themselves to be benefiting from European education that emphasises the value of a sound work ethic and adherence to a nine-to-five day,” he said. He noted that few factory workers took time off to go and watch football and hoped Europeans would take a leaf out of the book of these gentle, noble savages.
But he cautioned against undue optimism that natives would be able to withstand the negative influences of Europeans, “whom they obviously admire”. He said some of his more educated and westernised collegues, “in an attempt to outreconcile each other, are setting a bad example”. Refering to the Minister of Sport, Steve Tshwete, Mboweni said Africans should not see his behaviour a couple of years ago as worth emulating. “All the Xhosa ancestors must have turned in their graves as this man, who obviously has been to the mountain, broke down and cried in public,” derided Mboweni.
“What was he crying for? Not for a tragic event in his life, but because a bunch of white men dressed in white — who walk on the pitch and publicly scratch their crotches — had won a cricket match,” said T-man throwing his hands up. He wondered whether the team player who scratches his crotch more often and more rigorously than the others is the one who wins. I told him that what looks like scratching is the way players polish the ball. He responded: “Oh.
I wonder what he would do if those fat men in tight clothing who grab each others bums were to win. Poor Steve’s tear ducts would be drained.”
Asked why he felt that the minister of sport’s response would be worse than his last public weeping performance, Mboweni said a rugby weeping perfomance would be the “ultimate in reconciliation, wouldn’t it?” Mboweni said it would make the whites feel part of the new democracy, seeing a black man weep over white men. This black man, said T-man, was ignoring the fact that there aren’t too many black rugby players in the team.
I looked at my watch and wondered whether he would see that I was bored to tears if I told him I had to run. I was saved from shutting my possible door into the gravy train when we heard sniffing coming from the corridor. “That’s Steve the Tear man,” T, the M of L, rolled his eyes . “There we go again,” and he turned his gaze to the door as Tshwete walked past, his face in a striped handkerchief. “What is it now, Steve, did the Boks score a scrum?”
Tshwete appreciated Mboweni showing some interest. “It’s a try, Tito, not a scrum and they did not score it. The reason I am overcome with emotion is that I saw the team practising. It made me feel so South African and proud to belong to this nation.”
BUSINESS