Robert Kirby : Loose cannon
A lot of commentators are playing down the question of who will take over leadership of the National Party now that FW’s going. ”Who cares?” they cry. ”The NP is a spent force,” they mutter. ”It matters not who pilots a stalled wagon-train.”
I have to disagree. The future health and longevity of the National Party is of vital importance to a great many South Africans. Let the NP flake away and we’ll be left with this great white hole in our rainbow. While no one still expects the Nats to play much more than a walk-on role in functional politics, that doesn’t mean lots and lots of the good old boys aren’t grumbling in the wings.
At the very least these fellows deserve somewhere to keep their bigotry moist. The NP urgently needs to become a kind of spiritual and intellectual warehouse for all manner of remaindered prejudice. Fascism is a dish best eaten lukewarm.
So the first challenge, which will confront the NP’s Electoral College next Wednesday, will be to acknowledge drastically altered party priorities. Then only may they choose the best person to lead them into a whole new era of being cruelly misunderstood.
To ensure their congenital political intolerance remains inviolate, the Nats will need to elect a new leader whose forbearance of political dissent is on the shortest of strings. No matter how polished the candidate looks on the outside, inside there must lurk something typically ”NP” in nature. I suggest they elect some kind of proven political vulgarian.
As its renaissance gathers speed, Africa is shedding many of its small-republic despots. The Nats might consider seeking out one of these, either recently or about to be thrown out of his imported Italian marble palace.
They should look for someone in the true Malan/Strijdom/Vorster mould, a martially deranged tyrant known to have sent in squadrons of psychopathic goon-militia to re-educate his political opponents, who fears and despises the exceptions to what he deems a decent Christian society should comprise – all those sordid Vaseline- drenched nancy-boys. Someone who can’t make up his mind which he admires more, censorship or imprisonment without trial; someone whose quaint economic theories have reduced the national fiscus to a waterless memory; someone who regards state assets, such as the national airline and army pensions, as his own and who generally doesn’t give a blind mango about spending truck-loads of money on himself and his close family.
As you can see, the Electoral College won’t have to cast its net too wide. What they must avoid is hauling in some power-crazed homicidal autocrat who still has any African National Congress confetti sticking to him. Which leaves only Jonas Savimbi or Ian Smith.
I fear it will have to be one of our local idols and there’s little doubt, in my opinion, that the best choice would be Lucas Mangope. I am quite sure the Department of Justice could baleka in and do something about helping Mangope shuffle off his numerous tortal coils. Advocate Gumbi could find 20 minutes to rush off a quick two-and-a-half-page total exoneration like she did for Alan Boesak.
Mangope should be an excellent vessel in which to preserve the NP’s most opulent deceits. Not only does he actually look like a black man, it’s well-known that he’s never had any problem with licking the hands of the white men who have always controlled him – there’s more than one meaning to traditional leadership. What’s more, Mangope’s soldiers know exactly how to deal with any gun-toting right-wing tourists.
In any event, it is high time the Nats stopped carefully excluding white candidates. This is because I believe that they would be better off getting it over with. They need to appoint their first ethnic leader right now. If he’s not only ethnic but a historically disempowered lesbian as well, everyone is going to be happy.