/ 12 December 1997

Year of Elton’s newish wig

Robert Kirby : Loose cannon

With yet another Christmas spree about to bankrupt us, this is the time when it’s expected of responsible columnists to make an effort to reflect perceptively on the year just fled.

It’s quite hard. Where do you start in trying to summarise, say, the corruption and general criminality of 1997’s endeavours? Such is the sheer amplitude of our present political and bureaucratic sleaze, its summary deserves a daily breakdown. It could be a little like the Court Circular published daily in London. Can you imagine the copy in such a column?

Today’s Corruption Circular. “The Honourable uThandimali Sithole, MEC of Housing for Needy Parliamentarians, will be sidestepping all tendering procedures when, at noon today, she will sign the R879- million contract for the construction of 1500 luxury Sandy Bay villas, awarding it to her sister, uFihlamali.

“It is hoped President Nelson Mandela will attend the ceremony and shower his blessings upon yet another example of non- gender-based black empowerment.”

It could celebrate more oblique examples of democratic nepotism: “Alex Boraine’s brother-in-law, Squamous Wart, today applied for and was granted instant total amnesty by the truth commission for having hijacked a jumbo jet and forced its captain, at gunpoint, to fly all the way from Miami to Cape Town, demanding a ransom of R3-million in return for killing only the elderly passengers. Wart said his action was politically motivated as he wanted to be in Cape Town to attend the commission’s celebratory walk across Hout Bay.”

The most positive thing, for me, that came out of another memorable event, Princess Di’s fast-lane death, was that it forced Elton John to invest in a newish wig, though someone has said it was an old one he’d washed in roof primer.

On the subject, here’s another quote, this one from a letter published in the November edition of the London Review of Books. (Of course I’m name-dropping. You don’t think anyone of my swollen mind can get by on the Sunday Times’s Reader’s Digest Condensed Book of the Week?) “Candle in the Wind was not the appropriate song,” wrote Walt “Bugsy” O’Brien from Barre, Vermont. “Better would have been Dead Man’s Curve. Diana signified and embodied the . numbing fixation on the lives of the rich, famous and beautiful. Fat chance all this would have happened if she were 1,5m tall and weighed in at 180kg.”

What else was wonderful about 1997? I have to admit that I’ve been fascinated, and a little scared, reading about the female condoms. Can you believe some latter-day suffragette has already dubbed them “femidoms”? I can’t say I’ve actually seen one of these dreadful things except in photographs. However, a friend, who wants to be known as X says he tested one with a forgiving lass. He says it was like fucking a gigantic bank-bag that someone had sprayed with Mr Min. Not fun, but he’s got the shiniest glans on the block.

What next? The latest jailbreaks have been easily the smoothest of the year, even if Dullah Omar is now blaming them on something he calls a “Struggle Broomstick”.

Apparently they use these in maximum security prisons to wedge open the electronic doors so the escaping bank robbers don’t get frustrated and interfere with anyone’s constitutional right to life. Dullah’s asking for a commission of inquiry which will report to Parliament on why, on this last occasion, only seven very dangerous ex-liberation fighters were helped out.

What to end with? The exciting news that Virodene is making a comeback? The Sunday Times thinking of rehiring Ken Owen? Have I forgotten anything about 1997? I do hope so.

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