Robert Kirby
Loose cannon
This week I intended to continue the genial deconstruction of Political Correctness which I began last week. However, a conversation I overheard while fly-fishing on the Upper Berg River late last Sunday afternoon has made me postpone. These were more immediate voices.
By masterly presentation of a Size 18 Black Gnat exquisitely tied by my friend, Eddie Herbst I had just landed a vigorous young rainbow cock. After carefully beating the exquisite creature to death with a small stone I belong to the Catch-and- Decease school I realised that to explore the shadowed spill at the throat of the pool, I would have to clamber around a tall clutch of boulders. Halfway round I heard an angry voice.
Cautiously I peered up.Sitting a few feet above me were a couple of middle-aged baboons. They were peering at a copy of last weeks Mail & Guardian. The baboon on the right stabbed a resentful finger at the newspaper.
I cant believe this, he said. Pallo Jordan has just issued a permit for 100 of us baboons to be rounded up and sent off to France. Once there, these lucky winner- simians will become the subjects of French scientific research. Exterminated as slowly and painfully as possible.
He sighed heavily. Back in l994, when I went along and voted for the ANC, I really thought things were going to change. He flicked a decaying beetle over his shoulder. This is forced removals all over again.
The baboon on the left shivered. I dont want to end my life terrified and weeping my eyes out in a stainless-steel cage in some flouresecent-lit Paris laboratory. I want to die with dignity. Like my old man did, with an affectionate shaft of late Karoo sun on my back, red dust on my hands, the trembled joy of the spikeheeled lark in my ears.
Try selling that sort of slush to Pallo, said the baboon on the right. And theres even better news, he added Not only is the good Pallo selling us off. Hes engaged the very same live-animal capture agency which, last time they were involved in baboon acquisition, let a few hundred of us slowly starve to death in that abandoned camp.
You mean those Centre Africain Primatologie Experimentale (Cape) mothers? Werent they the same ones who supplied all those live baboons for the French nuclear tests?
The very same. When Cape steals our children its only because they know French scientists desperately need more South African baboons to strap to their plutonium bombs.
Which is where Pallo Baby really comes into his own, he continued. Just after French scientists had slaughtered their 5 000th South African baboon this decade, Pallo got all upset and issued a moratorium on the export of any more South African baboons. I well remember his sentiments: Under an ANC government there is no way any democratic South African ape will ever again feel he is so unwanted in the country of his birth, that he has to be sold off as fodder for Eurocentric medical experiments.
A moratorium which Pallo has suddenly now revoked, he added sadly. Apparently the French government has put its stamp of approval on the very same agency.
So has Eugene Terreblanche by the sound of it, said the other. This is naked apism.
Whats more, I see that, in his rush to promote the advancement of French scientific research, Pallo blackballed any consultation or advice from experts from Cites. The last time I heard of anyone that wise and powerful was in the Old Testament, murmured the baboon on the right.
Are you actually suggesting that Pallo Jordans thinking would have gone down well during the dawn of recorded history?
No, said the baboon on the right. Its not nearly that modern.
Cest la mort, sighed the other heavily.