Krisjan Lemmer
The management at the Dorsbult Bar had to send out for fresh supplies of sickbags this week, what with all the heaving going on among patrons over the Robert McBride story. Our old friend “Suiker” Britz rushed to Maputo and announced it was his considere d and unbiased opinion that the young diplomat was guilty of everything. The Star announced he was believed to have been buying arms for the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
The Citizen said he was believed to have been plotting a coup. Not to mention the Democratic Party’s Colin Eglin leaping up and down and yammering like a bald-headed parrot with St Vitus’s dance.
Pardon the indignation, but even the “biggest liar in the Bushveld” has standards. In Ireland it is known as “felon-setting” – setting a man up for execution, with speculative talk – and those who indulge in it are regarded with contempt.
With one of our diplomats languishing in a foreign jail, was it too much to ask of The Star that they avoid propagating the rubbish churned out by the Dirty Digger’s awful London rag, the Sunday Times? They offered as “evidence” that McBride was smugglin g arms for the IRA the fact that he had recently been visited in South Africa by a Sinn Fein representative at the Anglo-Irish peace talks, Gerry Kelly.
Was The Star unaware that Kelly – who made no secret of his visit – is just the latest of a string of former IRA men and women who have traipsed out to South Africa to try and discover how we pulled off a peace settlement?
They might as well have reported that Nelson Mandela’s trip to Stockholm in 1993 was evidence that the Nobel Prize committee was smuggling dynamite to Umkhonto weSizwe (MK). As for The Citizen’s discovery of a plot to overthrow the government … Is that sickbag empty, Oom Schalk?
The achievements of the British press in misreporting Irish affairs are well known, at least among the Irish. Some do it in the low cause of patriotism, others because … well, hell, it makes a good story, dunnit ?
So, in the wake of the Kelly expos,, the Dorsbult Bar was loud with reminiscences about the glorious deeds of British hackery in that benighted corner of Her Majesty’s territories.
Lemmer’s favourite related to the attempted assassination of the Republican firebrand and former MP, Bernadette McAliskey (n,e Devlin), in 1981. McAliskey, ironically, owes her life to the fact that her farmhouse in Northern Ireland was under surveillanc e by British troops when Protestant gunmen burst in and shot her nine times. The troops nabbed the startled would-be killers as they ran out and r adioed for help.
Naturally, it was big news in the newspapers the next day, but none of them could match the scoop by the Daily Mirror – an exclusive interview with McAliskey describing the attempt to kill her! There was one small problem, though. When the Daily Mirror hit the streets with the interview emblazoned across the front page, McAliskey was still in a coma.
The reporter responsible was called in by his news editor to explain this troubling detail. The conversation went something like this: Reporter: The soldiers called for para-medics, right? – Right. – They came in by helicopter. – Yes. – They gave her an intravenous drip. – Okay. – They loaded her in the helicopter. – Right. – One soldier had to kneel beside her in the helicopter, on the way to hos pital, to hold the plasma bottle in the air. – Yes. – Sorry, I have to protect my sources. The Mirror didn’t ever retract.
One could debate until well after closing time the issue of forgiveness, or lack of it, where the Magoo’s bomb is concerned. The debate might take in such issues as the culpability of the pilots over Dresden and whether FW de Klerk was right in drawing t he parallel with Barend Strydom, who put his gun against the heads of pedestrians around Church Square, chosen solely for the colour of their skin , and smiled into their eyes before blowing their brains out.
Mention might also be made of the fact that McBride did at least serve six years, surviving the nightmare of death row as well as an attempt to assassinate him on the eve of his release. This is in sharp contrast with numerous characters who had such fun in the security forces, torturing and murdering, and have never served a day. Not to mention a few politicians who carry a burden of responsibili
ty …
One thing that cannot be doubted about McBride is his courage. When the media sketches his background, they tend to overlook his extraordinary rescue of his MK commander, Gordon Webster, a few months before Magoo’s.
Webster was in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Edendale hospital after being shot in the stomach by police. McBride and his 54-year-old father, Derek, dressed up as doctors, cut their way through a security fence, walked into the ICU and opened fire on the armed guards before wheeling Webster to freedom on a hospital trolley. The stuff of Hollywood.
A more recent example of his courage (foolhardiness, some might say) was in 1993 when the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) stormed the World Trade Centre during the constitutional negotiations. African National Congress negotiators phoned Shell Hous e for help.
McBride drove to the trade centre, bought a copy of the Die Patriot and, using it as his “accreditation”, sauntered through AWB checkpoints with an assault rifle under his jacket to take up a position outside a room where the ANC negotiators were hiding.
Whatever one might think of Robert, the sight of Paula – who married him on death row and effectively saved him from the hangman – striding out to do battle for her man is a stirring one indeed.
A passionate champion of justice in the broad sense (the bench will no doubt long remember the drubbing she handed out to the judiciary before the truth commission), she is truly a rock.
Give a man a battalion of Paula McBrides and he could rule the world … if she would let him.