The Robert McBride saga has been presented as an “embarrassment” for the South African government. As time goes by it is becoming apparent that it is far more significant than that. It seems to mask a major threat to national security and McBride is seem ingly not the culprit.
For those familiar with the activities of the security forces during the apartheid years, the first sniff that there was another reality behind McBride’s arrest was the unseemly haste with which police Assistant Commissioner “Suiker” Britz rushed to Mapu to and announced (by one account without even seeing the accused) that the young diplomat was guilty of gun-running.
On its own that might have been taken as another symptom of the near-pathological hatred which unreconstructed whites nurse towards McBride.
But then, in an oh-so-familiar way, the smears began mysteriously appearing. McBride was a buddy of the East Timor dissidents; he was in cahoots with the Irish Republican Army.
And finally – a smear self-evidently planted by elements of military intelligence (MI) who make such a mockery of the word “intelligence” – he was planning a coup against his own government!
To cap it all, MI, through their chosen mouthpiece, The Citizen (nothing changes), announced that they had been keeping McBride under surveillance for two years as a suspected gun-runner.
Considering that the diplomat enjoyed high-security clearance as a member of the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee, the operation – if it was mounted – was clearly not motivated by the interests of the government of the day.
Now, to fill in the picture even more, the Mail & Guardian reports evidence that McBride’s arrest may have been a trap instigated by MI in cahoots with elements of the Mozambican security services – presumably because he was getting too close to the trut h as to who is really behind the continuing violence in South Africa.
Our government now finds itself in a position akin to that of a farmer who, hearing the shout of “snake” in his back yard, flings open the door of his gun cupboard to be faced by a rearing cobra.
What to do?
It is difficult to offer advice without access to information at the government’s disposal. Perhaps it is time to get Judge Richard Goldstone back in the saddle.
But, whatever else it decides, we would urge the government to secure the early release of McBride back to South Africa.
President Nelson Mandela can stand guarantee, if needs be, that he will return for trial. But it would be unconscionable, in the light of the evidence which is beginning to emerge, for McBride to languish for long in a foreign jail.
Getting a grip on PC pronouns
We shouldn’t laugh too loudly at the plight of politicians in France as they grapple with the grammar of political correctness.
The Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, has ruled (as a contribution to this month’s International Women’s Day) that in future women in government should be called madame la ministre.
This gesture has inevitably incurred the wrath of the Acad,mie Franaise, which guards the traditions of French grammar, including the gender of nouns, like a linguistic Rottweiler. We shouldn’t laugh because the English-speaking world has problems of he r/its/his/their own.
Although the process of linguistic evolution has enabled English to shed many of its Latinate genders, it still finds itself unable to cope with certain situations where the pronoun insists on being given a sex. “Everyone should do his bit” is no longer acceptable, but to substitute “her” or “its” or even “their” creates a counterbalancing confusion. We certainly need a new word. That’s the easy b it. But what should it be?
It was comparatively easy to force the pace of evolution by coining “chairperson” or “chair” to oust “chairman” from its sexist perch. And “mankind” is gradually being replaced by “humankind” (which, although it still contains the misleading word “man”, is sort of ambushed by the letters around it).
Thousands of new words have been created in recent years. Most of the time the new words are generated in response to market pressures.
Except in one case. Inventing a non-gender-specific pronoun to embrace men and women has so far proved elusive. The obvious solution would be to take one letter from “his” and insert it in “her” (or vice versa) to produce “hir”. It doesn’t sound right – but nor, presumably, did the word “his” when it was first uttered.
Maybe a tiny tranche of millennium money should be set aside for the deviser of the best solution. Are there any suggestions out there?