No ball
Speculation is developing in British political circles that Minister for Africa Peter Hain — once again bête noire of the South African government — is intent on taking up residence at No 10 Downing Street. Cited as evidence is the sensitivity of the celebrated (not to mention hated) anti-apartheid campaigner to assumptions that he is South African.
“His new thinking on foreign policy is certainly brave and some of the most innovative to have emerged from Whitehall. So how far up the greasy pole of power does he want to go?” questions an interviewer in the New Statesman magazine. “A ministerial colleague had dismissed his chances of the leadership because ‘the British people would never allow a South African prime minister’. Quick as a flash, Hain assures me he has British citizenship (he was born in Kenya), ‘so I’ve always had my own British passport by birth — I probably meet Norman Tebbit’s cricket test’.” It will be remembered that Tebbit — Margaret Thatcher’s one-time hatchet-man — suggested as the litmus test of nationality whether the (would-be) subject supports the national cricket team. Not quite cricket, is it, Peter?
All change
The Department of Public Works has installed a voice system in Parliament’s lifts, which announces the floor being approached. This is most convenient, particularly for the visually impaired. Unfortunately, in the Marks Building, where the opposition parties are housed, the system announces “ground floor” on all levels. Which is of no help to the blind and sends a confusing subliminal message to the already confused occupants of the building.
Yo ho ho
Adverse winds must be blowing in Cape Town. The yachting fraternity seems to be spending all its time and energy in the tavern of the seas, banging off anecdotes to the Dorsbult Bar about the predisposition of editors of the Cape Times to fall overboard. Tales of the adventures of John Scott and Victor Norton in the drink have now been capped by disclosures as to why Norton’s splash never reached public print. Norton took his dip at the start of the Cape to Rio yacht race, as Lemmer has previously disclosed. Now it transpires he was on a yacht called Speedwell, jointly owned by him and Judge Louis van Winsen a former chair of the Press Council. Norton stumbled, but he refused to let go of his beer, which meant he was unable to grab hold of the safety railing. The beer was, however, saved. “No greater love can an editor have than this …” Die Burger got hold of the story at the time and was about to publish it when former editor Piet Cillie spiked it on grounds that “dog does not eat dog”. Seadogs, Lemmer presumes.
No contest
Up in the Northern Cape things have not gone well for the once-mighty PAC. It has just fired its entire provincial leadership (“its entire membership?” chorus the cynics) after it failed to put up a single candidate in the local government elections in the province. This, according to its general secretary, Thami Plaatjie, was only realised two days after the elections, because provincial leader Mathews Lentikile had been “at loggerheads with his colleagues”. Plaatjie did, however, say that “we are sure that if we had contested the elections we would have done well”. Some consolation!
Quiz time
Who said: “The need for special investigating units to investigate corruption flows, inter alia, from the fact that those under investigation are sometimes senior state officials, including policemen and policewomen and members of the law enforcement agencies — Another reason for the use of special investigative units concerns the sometimes sophisticated nature of corruption, maladministration and the like and the need for people with the requisite expertise to investigate often complex matters involving financial fraud.” Answer: Penuell Mpapa Maduna, Minister of Justice, in an affidavit before the Constitutional Court in the case of the South African Association of Personal Injury Lawyers vs the special investigative unit and others. All of which should explain why none of 83 motivations by the unit for proclamations between April 1 1999 and March 31 2000 have yet been approved. Why 127 motivations, all submitted to the Department of Justice, are still outstanding. And why the Heath special investigative unit is so unsuitable for the inquiry into the R43-billion arms deal.
Authoritative?
The New African Yearbook 2001, published recently by IC Publications in London, provides details of about 53 African countries. Boasting that this, its 13th edition, has been “thoroughly revised”, it notes in the index that the chapter on Mozambique has been compiled with the assistance of “Ruth First/Alan Rake”. As Ruth First was assassinated back in 1982, this might be described as a novel form of revision.
Spooky!
‘Come the millennium, month 12 / in the name of the greatest power / The Village Idiot will come forth / To be acclaimed the leader.” — Nostradamus, 1555. How did he know?