This will have to be a hurried letter. Some people can begin relaxing at this time of the year, but not the president of the republic.
First of all it was the Free State, which I thought I had sorted out until Friday morning when Ivy came banging on my door, sobbing and wailing that Terror would not let her play premier. I had to hurriedly phone Bloemfontein to sort it out. Terror assured me that he had only been teasing.
Then I had deputations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the right wing (an unholy alliance if there ever was one), demanding I extend the cut-off date for amnesty.
Constand Viljoen got very excited, disclosing that he had organised a coup on the eve of my inauguration. He said if I did not extend the cut-off date I would be forced to arrest him and the 50 000 combatants he had mobilised on that occasion. That would trigger a backlash by the volk and reduce the country to anarchy. When I inquired what had happened to the coup, he looked embarrassed and mumbled that he had forgotten the password.
Tutu was equally excited, because he had just had news that Brian Mitchell ‘ the police captain who discharged his patriotic duty by massacring 11 men, women and children at Trust Feeds ‘ had become a born-again Christian. Squeaking that this showed the power of forgiveness, the good archbishop begged me with tears in his eyes to extend the amnesty into the new millennium, so that unborn generations of murdering swine could also have an opportunity to find their God.
I tried to temporise with him, suggesting he had to be a little bit tougher in hunting down the truth, and citing as examples his failure to date to elicit confessions from the likes of PW Botha and FW de Klerk. This excited him yet further. Triumphantly pulling a sheet of paper from some hidden compartment in the nether regions of his cassock, he announced he had a full and frank confession from FW. On examination it turned out to be a sworn affidavit from my predecessor, admitting and begging forgiveness for having, on April 12 1957, on board the Trans-Karoo Express, broken the law of the land in flagrant disregard for the sign in his compartment which said moenie spoeg nie.
PW had proved a more difficult nut to crack, conceded Tutu. But, waving a second piece of paper triumphantly, he announced that with the help of some of the country’s most brilliant psycho-analysts the commission had devised a subtle and cunning set of questions which were guaranteed to flush the old man out. It read as follows:
What’s your name? Former employment? Distinguishing marks? Have you ever been nasty to little crocodiles? …
Frankly, I am beginning to wonder whether the whole exercise has been worth it. I know there has been great excitement in the media about Cabinet ministers opting to ‘tell all’, but when you examine the fine print it is hardly the stuff of a liberation war. Maybe I will have to tell the secret that the branch never managed to wring out of me. Strictly between us, Walter, when I was arrested disguised as a chauffeur in Howick, I never had a driving licence!!! — Nelson