Now that the touching Allan Boesak tragicomedy is grinding down, the political apologists have again been hard at work, trying to explain it all away. Of the more occult deconstructions have been those emanating from that master spinner of words, Mr Thabo Mbeki.
It was from Mbeki’s office that the first truly imaginative Boesak mitigation was issued. A couple of years ago a two-and-a- half-page exoneration of Boesak was released, prepared by Mbeki’s chief legal adviser, advocate Mojanku Gumbi. According to Mr Mbeki this profound legal assessment was completely misconstrued by the media. Apparently all Gumbi had said was that there was no evidence she could find of any misappropriation of funds. A gloating media misinterpreted this as a verdict of not-guilty, which it was never meant to be. It was only an interim whitewash.
So once again it has been the accursed media to blame. I am not surprised Mr Robert Mugabe has Zimbabwe reporters regularly tortured. Mr Mbeki should waste no time in emulating the Mugabe syllabus. It should be clear to him by now that his weekly tongue-lashings are just not doing the job. It’s time to stow the scorn and bring out the whips and jump-leads.
It is worth noting, however, that advocate Gumbi’s succinct assertions of Boesak’s blamelessness not only hoodwinked the media. Within hours of her exculpation an ecstatic Allan Boesak was up on television news boasting about a phone-call he’d had from President Mandela that very afternoon. Mandela had both congratulated him on his “acquittal” and assured him that his appointment as ambassador to Geneva was ratified.
While I’m grateful to Mr Mbeki for having kicked the media straight on the matter of the Mojanku absolution, I feel he might be guilty of cognitive dissonance in some remarks he made earlier last week. Answering questions in parliament about the Government Communication and Information System’s dubious use of public funds to promote the ANC’s cause, Mr Mbeki pleaded with his critics “not to shoot the messenger”.
Mbeki seems to forget that the GCIS is not only the messenger carrying all the expensive ANC-friendly pamphlets, radio inserts and booklets, it is also their progenitor, author of the entire media campaign, its publisher. So I can’t help wondering why Mr Mbeki only condemns messengers – that is, the media – when they don’t bear the news he wants to hear. When the messengers come in approved forms – that is, the GCIS – they are protected like the royal game they seem to be.
But getting back to the toppled struggle- icon. No one in the government seems capable of keeping a safe distance from Allan Boesak. Never passing up the chance to do pundit impersonations, up last Sunday popped trusty old Dullah Omar, pumping out warm words befitting of Boesak’s selfless contributions to the “freedom we all enjoy today”. Clearly Omar thought that, as Minister of Justice, he needed to get in some arguments in mitigation of sentence ahead of all those expensive lawyers. Airport huggings weren’t enough.
Nor is anyone ever likely to see a blind cent of the Boesak loot in the way of reimbursement. Or will the strident voices of the government’s anti-corruption initiative demand that Elna Boesak’s private video- studio be cashed in? Anyone care to offer odds on that?
It is quite hard not to crow about the Boesak affair. The way the ANC hierarchy has handled their end of it has been acutely embarrassing. They deserve every brickbat they get. One of their closest brethren is guilty of the cynical theft of monies donated as relief for the desperately hungry and dispossessed, the very human casualties the ANC claims it is their moral imperative to liberate and comfort – a grotesque inversion of the Robin Hood principle. That ANC mandarins like Omar now see fit to depict Boesak as some kind of wounded martyr is without excuse. They should have been the first and shrillest to cry foul.
Instead the ANC’s mawkish justifications, their indiscreet interferences, covert defence funding and latterly their ostentatious disavowals of Boesak have been like watching a bad magician fumble his way through his turn. All the faltering sleight- of-hand, the maladroit “vanishes”, the badly manipulated “productions”, the floundering misdirection.
As of writing this – two days ahead of Boesak’s sentencing – I feel no emotion except for one akin to regret for a life so vainly squandered as Allan Boesak’s. You don’t have to look too far to the left or right of him to recognise the primary stimulation for his frailties.