Loose cannon:Robert Kirby Carl Jung called it synchronicity, the acausal relationship between events. Two completely unrelated things I read last week seemed suddenly to fit that bill. The one was a book by Ilya Zbarsky and Samuel Hutchinson, called Lenin’s Embalmers, and the other was Minister Jay Naidoo’s lengthy Right to Reply, published in denial of an M&G article by Ferial Haffajee in which she had speculated on Naidoo’s political future.
I didn’t see any relationship between the book and the article. That was until I got to a sentence in the latter, as perfect an example of the celebrated Naidoo humility as you could wish to see: “I suppose sexy headlines sell newspapers and I should consider putting a patent on my name before it gets used by any other newspaper that is suffering from flagging circulation.”
That, along with a quick admiring look at the M&G’s large photograph of a grinning Jay Naidoo, made me realise suddenly that the government might be looking at making a significant contribution, not only to tourism, but to the African renaissance itself.
First, a touch of background. Immediately after his death in January 1924, it was decided that the body of Vladimir Ilyich – or Lenin as he is better known – was to be preserved. There was some argument between ideologues in the Soviet leadership as to whether he should be frozen or embalmed. While all this argument was going on the body decomposed quite badly and desperate measures had to be taken. The lungs and liver and other internal organs were removed. The brain had already been taken, to be studied for evidence of superhuman intellect.
A professor of anatomy first cleaned out the body, then used formalin as the fundamental preservative. Proud socialist workers from a rubber factory toiled patriotically on their day off to make a rubber bath, to hold a soup consisting of 240 litres of glycerine, 110 kilos of potassium acetate, 150 litres of water and a dash of quinine chloride – shaken not stirred. Lenin was marinated in this interesting concoction for three months. To keep him supple, every eighteen months he is given a top-up soaking. After which they wrap him up tightly in his rubber bandages and return him to public adoration
The same treatment had been given to Stalin, who rested beside Lenin in the Red Square mausoleum for eight years until Kruschev had him buried. On behalf of the North Vietnamese, Ho Chi Minh was embalmed by Russian experts and is still kept in a special cool chamber in a massive temple in Hanoi.
What I am saying is that the idea of embalming great political minds is hardly new. The early Egyptians did it and, as that splendid man, William Makgoba, often reminds us, the pyramids and other pre-Christian scientific and cultural achievements are actually part of a founding African civilisation that predated the Greek and Roman empires. Which is why embalming can be recognised as a fundamental part of the African renaissance. As late as 1979 the Angolan president, Aghostinho Neto, was embalmed – another precedent.
This brings us back to Mr Jay Naidoo who, if his Right to Reply is anything to go by, would be a perfect candidate for the rubber bath. By his own admission, Naidoo is of formidable political sagacity, someone who is “passionate about the mission for the African renaissance”. Best of all, in Jay’s case they wouldn’t have to use nearly as much glycerine.
As the advanced African civilisation which Mr Mbeki continually assures us we are about to become, South Africa cannot really afford to allow death to wither and obliterate the memories of those who fought to realise their democratic vision. Just like Lenin, stupendous intellectuals like Jay Naidoo should be preserved for posterity, in as close an approximation of their living state as possible.
Just a suggestion, but perhaps Naidoo could be the first to be embalmed in the lotus position, with a hidden speaker going “ummmmmmmm” every now and then.
I wouldn’t dream of suggesting who else in the current political rainbow deserves preservation in this manner. That is a decision for minds wiser than mine. I would only suggest that Pik Botha is another ideal candidate. We can’t waste him on a two-foot high statue in Orania, like they did with Verwoerd. They could exhibit a pickled Pik, crouched over a potjie.
As for tourism, well, you only have to remember the queues of inquisitive Americans that once regularly stretched across Red Square, to wonder at that potential benefit.
As old William might have said: “Let us not to the marination of true minds admit impediment.”