That most sought after of South Africa’s struggle-veterans, Dr The Honourable Allan Boesak, Archimandrate and Moderator of The First Church of Christian Self-Enrichment, has applied for presidential pardon.
Certainly Allan Boesak fulfils the apparently main criterion for pardon in that he’s shown no remorse
whatsoever for his crimes. He’s often said that the fraud and corruption for which he was tried and briefly imprisoned was no more than subversive apartheid at play. When he ripped off all that money meant for the relief of those cruelly dispossessed by apartheid he was doing it solely on behalf of those cruelly dispossessed by apartheid. This is called “struggle logic” and after two minutes of listening to Penuell Maduna justifying the recent presidential pardoning of 33 assorted thugs, rapists, armed robbers and murderers, it’s easy to see how it works.
As has been well demonstrated, when he’s handing out pardons Mr Mbeki isn’t unduly worried that the beneficiaries of his largesse might go out and behave shittily all over again. Mr M attaches no conditions. When he tosses some multiple murderer back into innocent civilian company Thabs doesn’t demand the fellow make soothing promises about future good behaviour. Once out and expunged of all previous guilt, the fortunate sociopath is quite free to go and do it all over again. Apparently one of the president’s recent pardonees needed only two weeks to kill his next victim. Murdering on behalf of liberation doesn’t need nearly as much time as it used to.
An enviable precedent has thereby been set. It would seem that any politically aggrieved citizen may now kill his politically opposing victim in the almost certain knowledge that, if caught and sentenced by the courts, it won’t be too long before Penuell Maduna quite likely recommends to the Big T that the said citizen be set free. All the said citizen will have to do is to send a petition saying: “I was driven to slaughtering a white man by my uncontrollable resentment for apartheid”, at which jail bars will become butter in the sun.
The strongest rumours are saying that, once pardoned and officially cleansed, Allan Boesak will be given some high diplomatic posting, perhaps even the Geneva ambassadorship promised to him by Mr Mandela shortly after the last time they desperately tried to wipe his slate clean — Boesak’s slate, that is. I don’t think Geneva is at all a good idea. Apart from all the sniggering that would take place behind diplomatic hands, such a posting would give poor Reverend Allan the chance of appropriating not much more than some embassy silver. Not nearly loot enough. How could a few fenced forks, spoons and candlesticks yield enough to set up a fully equipped sound and video studio for Elna?
They’ll have to do much better than that. Allan Boesak might well have paid his debt to society but in doing so the poor fellow lost an entire foundation for peace and justice. His excellent name and character were dragged through the mud, he had to rely on dubious secret funding of his defence — some crypto-racists even implied this funding came directly from the government. Poor Allan also had to answer to a whole slurry of overtly biased judges and, at the end, had no option but to blame the African National Congress hierarchy for dumping him. He deserves to be paid back in kind and in full for the suffering he underwent on behalf of that very hierarchy. Pariah rhymes so well with Uriah.
I suggest humbly that once his pardon comes through, Allan Boesak is given some government posting where he may again deploy his gifts to the full. Once he’s done with the pardoning, Mr Mbeki should make it his business to see that Allan gets a position in the highest echelons of the government and which will allow our leading Christian paragon once again to preach morality from his shiny pulpit, while at the same time dipping his nimble fingers into money meant for the succour of the poor and feeble. A strongish position in something like the pensions or social welfare department would offer ample opportunities.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say Allan Boesak should be appointed to something as obviously ransackable as, say, the Reserve Bank, or anything even vaguely connected with the arms deal — that latter’s corruption opportunities are oversubscribed, anyway. But Baas Thabo must see that Allan gets a worthy launch pad for new venal ambitions. Put him high up in mineral and energy affairs, a corner of the corruption market that’s still wide open.
I know Mr Mbeki is a sucker for classical quotations, so I’ll share one with him. This Latin maxim was one of many beaten into my schoolboy hands with leather straps wielded by malignant Christian teacher-priests. The maxim, when it was thrashed in by Brother Hurley, lodged itself in some cranny of my mind above the 50-year floodline. It goes: judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur. The judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted.
Yours to use intellectually, Thabs.
Archive: Previous columns by Robert Kirby