Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon With what in the way of a gaudy extravaganza is South Africa planning to celebrate the arrival of the new millennium? There are only about 530 days left before the delight of living in the 20th century will become a thing of the past. As one of those who feels he has a better than even chance of still being alive 530 days from now, I would like to know where I may go to gape at some stunning millennium special event.
Like in Paris where, on the stroke of midnight, the Eiffel Tower will solemnly lay a gigantic fibreglass egg. This will instantly metamorphose into hundreds of television screens. No, I am not making this up. What will be even more inspiring to Parisians will be the sight of the River Seine, thronged with thousands of brightly coloured plastic fish. Not only the sight of the beloved river, but its millennium smell, too. The River Seine is going to be perfumed like the plastic fish-filled Parisian female it is apparently meant to represent.
Why, one wonders, isn’t someone thinking along these heroic lines so that, come the first twitch of the 21st century, we South Africans can have something to remember the occasion by?
I don’t mean we have to go to the cornucopian R7-million lengths the SABC went to in celebrating the launch of its new television channels.
Remember the Boeing 747 disgorging the entire OJ Simpson defence team? Noticing with pleasure that Dr Ivy can actually get off a jumbo jet at the right stop?
Our celebrations needn’t be nearly that expensive. Given a little imagination, a truly memorable new- century “occasion” could be mounted with half that amount of someone else’s boodle.
For a start and since it’s just a one- off thing, why can’t that prestigious showbiz team of Zuma and Ngema be persuaded to knock out a quick spectacular.
Perhaps they could arrange something to be seen as a grand metaphoric gesture of populist victory over shit-browed colonialism. Something dramatically symbolic of the triumph of democracy over crypto-fascist, land-grabbing racist realpolitik. Something both sad and meaningful. Like imploding the Voortrekker Monument, which instantly metamorphoses into low-cost housing.
Out of these humble dwellings would surge hundreds of rapidly dancing schoolgirls, dressed in cast-off Sarafina II costumes. Massed gumboot- dancers would swoop across the monument amphitheatre. A flood of brightly coloured artificial wild animals would be released from their cages to swoop down on the gumboot- dancers. South African white cultural achievement would be proclaimed by Natanil and David Kramer carefully tongue-painting each other’s cloaca. Someone could pour a few tanks of spare Danish toxic waste into the Apies River.
Finally, out of the ashes of the monument, a 400m inflatable hot-air balloon would rise, slowly filling and assuming the shape of present odds-on favourite, Mr Mbeki, his shoulders set firmly to the wind. He would float away into the stratosphere like yet another Branson record-attempt.
There’d only be the question of who gets to push the button. God willing, he’s still with us, let this be Bishop Tutu. We’ll need all the outside help we can summon.
Provided Chief Buthelezi doesn’t refuse permission for the Mbeki balloon to cross his airspace, the affair could be a dignified success.
All this is day-dreaming and, of course, quite unlikely. The South Africa of today is run by fiscal realists; the sort of people who would never dream of spending hard-taxed money on fin de sicle bashes. No matter how politically significant they could be; no matter how many of apartheid’s sepulchres they get to implode along the way.
Sadly, it’s now far too late to organise even a quickie like disempowering the Voortrekker Monument. Nor is there time to whip up a hasty Millennium Dome like the British are doing on an old gasworks at Greenwich.
So we are left with the current rumour that the Cabinet has already chosen the egalitarian option and will unselfishly be doing the celebrating on behalf of an electorate which it has advised not to waste its money on being victims of outmoded Gregorian calendar-recognition.
Word is out that the Cabinet is negotiating the hire of the QE2 so that on the night of the December 31 1999 it may be anchored on the International Date Line. Raising their crystal glasses in hope, the entire Cabinet, their families and selected friends, will greet the new century’s dawning at a mere R270 000 a plate.
Anybody got a spare iceberg?