LETTERS TO THE BEST MAN
To Tony Leon from Craig Tanner
I am a close confidant of Dr Essop Pahad, our leader’s Best Man. We are working together to ensure that our leader serves as president for his lifetime. My purpose in writing to you is twofold. I need to express appreciation of your role in consolidating our leader’s reign, but I must also take you to task regarding lapses in discipline.
As a lifelong disciple of the profit motive, you will take your hat off to what our leader has achieved in paralysing those tendencies in the liberation movement which are committed to unrealistic goals such as redistribution and social justice. I think you will be good enough to acknowledge that those who chose you as their candidate for Houghton in 1989 have, without ignoring your supporting role, our leader to thank for ensuring that things remain as good as ever. The closest the masses have ever got to those rolling lawns has been to mow them.
My concern is that, as much as the monied interests you have championed all your life are safe and secure, you are starting to lose the plot. Is it not enough that life for those on the Brenthurst Estate remains as comfortable as it is abject for those in Alexandra?
Nobody questions your abundance of ambition, but you must keep perspective. If democracy is going to serve us at all, it is crucial that those to whom you refer as “the have-nots” consent to the excesses of “the haves”. Given where you come from, you cannot, like our leader, pull this off or speak plausibly on behalf of the have-nots. It would come across as even more unconvincing and clumsy than your attempts to toyi-toyi at election time.
You need to accept that, if the haves are to keep it all, you must content yourself with a role outside government, but in effect complementing the sterling work of our leader. It is all about teamwork, but the trick is to conceal the fact that the two of you are on the same side.
For this reason, your recent comments in London that the economy was being soundly managed are grossly irresponsible. It is all very well for you to feel excited about privatisation but why say so and give the game away?
What we expect from you is rank hostility, which will enable our leader to allude to a counter-revolutionary threat which is posed supposedly to his right by your party. This is crucial if our leader is to subdue revolt within the alliance and create diversions which will buy time for more of the Thatcherite initiatives which have elicited such enthusiasm from you. You must, however, learn to take a punch and stop complaining about our leader’s resort to the race card. That is the script. Just think back to 1990. You would have regarded it as a bargain to have been offered, in return for being called a racist once or twice a week, the retention of all the material spoils of apartheid
You must assist our leader to raise the stakes of racial antagonism. Our leader needs to point to a racially defined foe, and, to be frank, few can compete with you in embodying all that is loathsome about the white man. I am not suggesting that you assume the guise of yesterday’s khaki-clad buffoons who were blown away on the streets of Mabatho. Your natural and instinctive persona is that of the archetypal boss arrogant, aggressive, smug, mean and patronising. We need you to emphasise these qualities what your spin people describe as “muscular liberalism” setting you apart from the bygone and naive altruism of Helen Suzman.
You should also trade on the fact that you are, for those who voted for PW Botha and John Vorster, a better bet than the weak-kneed Nationalists of today. Even Kortbroek had the grace to submit to you as a leader of the stature of the Nationalist icons he has worshipped all his life.
I gained the impression somewhere that you regarded crucifixion as a method we should look at. I think it was from one of your posters: “Nail them and jail them.” Why are you not openly celebrating the bloodstained heritage of the Democratic Alliance? I was disappointed to see that your new, improved DA website has no history web page. Whereas the New National Party website, which feeds into yours, has a link to “History”, one is presented with the following cryptic message: “This page is currently under construction. We apologise for any inconvenience.” I’m not sure who is constructing this history, but I trust that they won’t be coy.
If you are going to successfully promote the kind of polarisation and hatred which will shift focus from socio-economic questions, I suggest that you include a DA Hall of Fame, thumbnail biographies of DF Malan, JG Strydom and HF Verwoerd. In the 1980s, Kortbroek was active in Jeugkrag, a student organisation funded by the South African Defence Force. Let us have anecdotes about his role in fighting off the total onslaught, and maybe some of your better pieces from the SADF journal, Paratus.
I will call you next week to set up a meeting with me and Dr Pahad to explore ideas for incorporation into your website. We are also working with PW Botha and it might be a good idea to get him to help with the historical section during his lucid spells.
I must at this stage impress upon you that confidentiality is crucial. Yours for principled expediency