Krisjan Lemmer
There has been much excitement in the Groot Marico – protests in the back room of the Dorsbult Bar, resolutions calling the volk to arms, death threats etc etc – over reported plans to remove Paul Kruger’s name from South Africa’s biggest game park.
In the end calmer heads prevailed and the burghers agreed to set up a Committee for the Propagation of the Truth about Oom Paul, the purpose of which is to protect the great man’s reputation from the bad-mouthers who insist on presenting him as a flat-earther, a colonist and heap other such calumnies on our hero’s head. In fact Oom Paul was the leader of the anti- imperialist movement at the turn of the century and as such, the idol of revolutionaries the world over.
Lemmer’s enthusiasm for Oom Paul has been fanned by a recent reading of his engaging memoirs. An extraordinarily powerful man – he was reputed to be able to lift an ox-wagon with his bare hands – he owes his leadership of the Boer forces in part to his reputation as a man of action, which was founded in his prowess as a hunter. He confesses candidly in the memoirs that this reputation was based on his talent for running away. In those early days flint-lock rifles were notorious for misfiring and on repeated occasions only his speed on foot saved him from the attentions of big game he endeavoured to kill.
Lemmer’s favourite yarn from the memoirs tells of how he tried to shoot a buffalo. The flint- lock misfired, the buffalo charged and Kruger sprinted for a nearby swamp, diving into it to escape the indignant beast. To his horror the buffalo dived in after him. A wrestling match ensued, Kruger grabbing the buffalo’s horns, trying to force its head under the water and drown it. He had nearly succeeded when his hands started slipping on the slime.
Grabbing desperately for his knife, to slit the animal’s throat, he lost control of the horns. Both he and the buffalo sprang out of the swamp as one and charged off . in opposite directions, “my appearance no less disreputable than the buffalo’s”.
For a lawyer our gallant Gauteng Premier, Mathole Motshekga, is a trifle slow on the draw. Alarmed at the discovery that the Mail & Guardian planned adding another item to his already crowded curriculum vitae – with the allegations he once worked for the security branch (this when he was not allegedly filching foreign aid funds) – he last week threatened us with an interdict. His attorneys sent us a letter on Thursday afternoon threatening dire consequences if we published. Unfortunately, in the finest traditions of journalism, our staff were all “out to lunch”, the paper already being at the printers. At 6pm his hired gun, one Stefaans le Roux, phoned to make further threatening noises.
The M&G duly put counsel on standby in anticipation of an attempt to persuade some high court judge that, in the interests of transparency, good governance and so forth, an interdict should be granted to prevent our delivery trucks from rolling. Later “boisterous” scenes were reported at the offices of the opposing attorneys. At 10.30 pm we were advised that no interdict would be forthcoming, the premier having “run out off steam”.
Whatever can this mean?
Whatever it meant, Gauteng’s leader was showing distinct signs of being tired and emotional this week. On Tuesday the African National Congress in Gauteng put out a press statement re- affirming its “full confidence” in Motshekga and denouncing the M&G for it failure to co-operate with the ANC commission of inquiry investigating the premier’s lurid past. This came as something of a surprise to our reporter, Stefaans (no relation) Brmmer, who had just spent 2,5 hours of his precious time testifying to the said commission – for the second time.
Weeks ago, when M&G first testified, Motshekga’s attorney was present and received a transcript of Brmmer’s evidence. Motshekga was afforded an opportunity to read the transcript and respond fully to its contents before the commission. We called the ANC to suggest they might like to put the record straight.
Oh no, they could not do that, protested their publicity department. They had received personal instructions to put it out by none other than . you guessed it!
Lemmer thought the CIA had set the high-water mark where scientific wackiness was concerned with its famous plot to inject defoliant into Fidel Castro’s boot polish in the hope it would cause his beard to fall out, exposing him to ridicule in a male chauvinist society. But South Africa’s scientific fraternity seems to be putting in a late challenge, what with its attempts to “cure” homosexuality with a therapeutic approach which could have come straight out of Tom Sharpe, not to mention its attempts to fashion nuclear bombs the size of ballpoint pens out of red mercury.
At the weekend well-heeled readers of Beggorrah O’Reilly’s overpriced comic, The Sunday Independent, were reduced to stitches by the story of attempts by military intelligence to cut the black birth rate by the development of a “vaccine”. Their source, one Dr Daniel Goosen – described improbably as “a veterinarian and pathologist” – was quoted as follows: “We were to have carried out important research in inter- species breeding programmes, transferring chimpanzee embryos to baboons. In transferring the embryo, the recipient baboon may reject it and in the rejection process the immune system becomes involved and immunology leads to vaccinology.” Talk about a baroque approach to birth control!
Sticking to the Sunday rags (a subject guaranteed to render Lemmer tired and emotional) readers of the Sunday Times may have been troubled by a sense of dj vu on reading a large article on the truth commission, written by poet Anjie Krog and trumpeted on the front page of that dreadful rag at the weekend. It is true, we published it last June.
It has seemingly been re-published by the Slimes as part of a cost-cutting exercise necessitated by an order-of-court settlement it has been forced to reach with Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) counsellor Johnny Matisonn, for its libellous suggestion that he was a passenger on board the IBA gravy train.
We do not usually crow about these things but if it must cheat its readers .