Robert Kirby
LOOSE CANNON
Using the African National Congress website as his medium, President Thabo Mbeki recently published some impressions of South Africa he acquired from a visiting Martian lady. He revealed these in a melancholy Letter from the President headed “Clamour over Zimbabwe reveals continuing racial prejudice in SA”.
While Mbeki was giving his Martian lady visitor a guided tour round South African white racial prejudice, the Venusian pilot of the flying saucer in which she had travelled had some time on his hands. Hovering over the Union Buildings he was able to use the spacecraft’s very advanced technology to have his own look into the secret workings of the South African presidency, itself.
What first impressed the Venusian pilot was the sheer efficiency of the presidency staff. Many in number, the compass of their duties was, however, severely restricted. But they applied themselves to their chores with diligence and commitment. Closer inspection of the hard drives of their amusingly rudimentary computers revealed that the secret of the presidency’s efficiency was, indeed, its utter simplicity. More than eight-tenths of the total drive-space was occupied with a stupendous array of description, argument, analysis, research, comment, review, deconstruction, contemplation and reflection, all on a single theme: a somewhat bitter abstraction called “race”. This single, small word was apparently the humble cornerstone of an immense and complex cognitive structure. From his knowledge of primitive worship formalities the pilot recognised the presidency for what it was: an intellectual cathedral for worship of the oldest religious precept in the galactic system: Holy Victimology.
The Venusian pilot watched in wonder as at regular intervals an office buzzer would sound and the loyal acolytes in the presidency would bow down, touch their speaking organs to the floor and raise their voices in joyful worship of Holy Victimology. They would be led in these prayer rites by their team leader, a vast and jovial wild-haired fellow referred to affectionately behind his back as The First Enema.
Once prayers were over the staff would fall to yet more pious onslaught of their computers, inventing staggering new variations on the central theme. They hammered out endless stodgy dissertations on the subject, subdividing it into arcane sub-specialities like “Naked Racism among White Oyster-Sexers”, “Colour Bigotry Destroys Soccer Plans”, “Rich Whites Plan SuperCity to Exclude Poor Blacks”, “Zimbabwe: A Victim of White Colonial Greed” and “When Democracy Triumphs Who Gives a Purple Shit How Many Elderly Farm Couples are Raped and Bludgeoned” or “Keeping the Struggle Alive by Naming Abject Squatter Settlements After Political Heroes”. The variations were endless and in their brilliant circuits was revealed a creative imagination of stellar proportions.
Chewing on his ammonia-flavoured nutrition bar the Venusian pilot pondered on what he had found when scanning these writings, listened in to the frenzied discussions of the presidency staff. They fair brimmed with terms like “moral” and “constitutional” and “scrupulous” and “a better life for all” and many other tentacle-warming symbologies. The only thing that seemed to interrupt the presidency’s steady quotidian rhythm were occasional, brief visits by its leader, President Thabo the Selfless, who dropped by to tell them how heartbroken he had felt when looking down from his luxury R300-million jet airline on the wretched victims of something called apartheid. “People are living in cardboard hovels, feeding off rubbish dumps,” he would proclaim sadly. “I had to forcibly stop myself throwing them down some smoked salmon sandwiches.”
After consulting with his inner self the Venusian came to the conclusion that the South African presidency was actually a working model of the intergalactic phenomenon termed rather enticingly a black hole in space. The presidency staff will probably be distressed to learn that being likened to a black hole in space has nothing whatsoever to do with racism. Black holes are so called because no light escapes a collapsing star as it disappears up its own fundament.
It was in the deployment of this latter talent that the presidency staff seemed at their most efficient. After a recent racism conference, attended by the entire presidency staff, four of their members could not be found. All they discovered were some badly singed sphincters from which no light could be seen escaping.
As he warmed up his engines for the return flight the Venusian pilot made concise notes in his ship’s log, knowing these would be of considerable interest to solar anthropologists on his home planet. Nothing particularly new, he noted. All they need urgently is another few centuries and a far less pathetic website.