Robert Kirby : Loose cannon
Last Wednesday my editor at the Mail & Guardian phoned me and asked me to avoid writing about anything serious this week. “Don’t be all preachy and self-righteous for our Christmas issue,” he said eagerly. “I want you to keep the column frothy and optimistic.”
“For the Christmas issue?” I asked, puzzled.
“Don’t argue. Swallow some anti-depressants, put on a paper hat and get on with it,” he snapped as he put the phone down.
I leaned back in my great creaking chair and tried to think up something to write about which could fulfil such a luminous brief. Frothy and optimistic? I let my mind drift and not a minute later, with a little shiver of light, it settled on the African National Congress Mafikeng congress. My mental camera zoomed in on that image of our Deputy Minister of Defence, Ronnie Kasrils, as he sucked face with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela after she’d withdrawn her application to sit on the right hand of Thabo Mbeki.
My spirits lifted. Other ecstatic memories flooded in about “The Third Ronnie” as he’s known to his many friends and admirers. I recalled a recent occasion when, outside the local Wimpy, I stumbled over a discarded copy of Armed and Dangerous, the official Kasrils autobiography, ghost-written for him by retired police officer Mr Plod.
Before Judge HCJ Flemming gets hold of Armed and Dangerous, I suggest you rush out and get your Xmas copy. Written in penetrating sub-adolescent style, the book bounces along with a refreshing lilt. Stalinism but with a lot more laughs. In particular it lends a whole new perspective to those epic television visions of Kasrils, every liberal bristle erect, the great rustling squillacotes of his eyebrows bright dappled with Ciskei’s sweetest dew, roaring like a feral Jeppe lesbian as he brought up the charge in Bisho. I can still hear that enraged kugel snarl: “Shaya and bulahlah lo white man’s puppets, my umfowetoes!” and “Yebo my amaComrades! Tina shall overcome the Afrikaans colonialist stooge-bhulas maneengi quickly!”
Other than being refused entrance in 1990 at a Mike’s Kitchen because Ronnie Kasrils was inside about to give a struggle speech, I can’t remember much else about our Deputy Minister of Defence so I’ll move on to having frothy, optimistic thoughts about another South African folk-hero, Mr Ian Woodall. Like a lot of people I have been wondering what has happened to Woodall since that wretched Sunday when both Derek Watts and Brian Pottinger came to his rescue at the same irresponsible moment. Since then no one has seen or heard a thing about our intrepid “By Appointment to The House of Mandela” summitter.
But there is a rumour going round about Sir Ian — according to his latest CV, he’s recently acquired a knighthood to add even more lustre to the distinguished military career the Sunday Times so fearlessly uncovered. Apparently Woodall’s now hiring himself out as Father Christmas. You get a discount if you hire Cathy O’Dowd as The Virgin Sherpa for the same party.
Enough of them. I want to quote the Prize Arseholism of 1997. The following must rate as the single most inane question ever asked on public television anywhere. It was when the SABC’s Gary Alfonoso asked the South African military attach=E9 in Taiwan the following — more or less verbatim: “When you got carried out of your flat on a stretcher alongside your daughter, both of you bleeding heavily having just been shot by the crazed gunman who was still holding hostage your wife and other daughter, were you feeling at all worried?”
Have a happy whatever. As you drive, sun-tanned and relaxed, back up the N1 past Worcester, have a glance up into the sky. I’ll be in one of those amiable gliders up there.