To: [email protected]
Subject: Emergency Summit Funding
Hi Smuttie. Big Mama says is there any chance of applying your influence with Trevor to shovel us over a couple of hundred million to cover unexpected technical overspend on the world summit? Do your best if you can.
Azzie
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Emergency Summit Funding
Tell Big Mama I’ll try but I can’t guarantee anything. Since Trevor had to hijack most of the KwaZulu pensions budget to pay for fitting the solid gold jacuzzi in the new presidential jet he’s become as tight as a duck’s arse. You’ll have to motivate so that he — not to mention The Philosophically Flatulent One (PFO) — has some instant explanation for the gutter media if this ever gets out.
Smuttie
To: [email protected]
Subject: Winning Smile
My Dear Trevor, before I start let me congratulate you on your recent television appearances. You’ve become a master of the smarmy ingratiating smile that now accompanies your patient explanations of the higher wisdom informing your inspired fiscal decisions. Well done. But to more mundane matters. Once again those global schmucks in foreign affairs have cocked up. Big Mama is now cap in hand for 200 beeeeeeg ones to cover what is being lightly termed “unexpected technical overspend” on the summit. I’m not sure what “technical” means but I suspect it’s to do with the costs of the forced removal of non-essential indigenous persons from Sandton for the duration of the party. Please give this your urgent attention.
Smuttie
To: [email protected]
Subject: No Grace
I’ve passed on your request to Trevor so we must only wait and hope. In the meantime would you please respond to a request faxed to this office from the Zimbabwe High Commissioner asking for “SADC Courtesy Travel-Share” on the new presidential jet for Mad Bob’s delightful wife, Grace. She’s convinced that if she goes along disguised as a member of the presidential groupies, she can bypass the United Kingdom travel ban and sneak in a quick Harrods shopping trip. Please advise the High Commissioner that this sort of request is seriously off-limits. In the name of Nepad solidarity the PFO remains quite prepared to look the other way on Mad Bob’s quotidian (his word) democratic excesses, but this is definitely not on. Be diplomatic but firm.
Smuttie
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Winning Smile
Dear Smuttie, have you taken leave of your senses? There is no way I am going to ransack my painstakingly sequestered slush funds to pay for the relocation of hawkers, dope pushers, prostitutes, beggars, street children or any others you so elegantly term as “non-essential indigenous persons”. Trevor
To: [email protected]
Subject: We’re On The Same Side Comrade
My Dear Trevor, non-essential indigenous persons is a term we made up so as not to give unnecessary offense to what we also privately agree are hordes of smelly paupers selling bananas, combs, garbage bags, curried locusts and so on. We simply can’t have these kind of creatures swarming all over Sandton’s pavements at a time like this. The purpose of the World Summit on Sustainable Development is to talk meaningfully about the universal human tragedy of poverty, not to have it shoved into everyone’s faces.
Smuttie
To: [email protected]
Subject: Floodgates?
Dear Smuttie, tell Big Mama if she’s looking for quick unaccountable cash she might try that Harksen fellow in Cape Town. Another two years of guaranteed unforeseen administrative delays in processing his extradition could open the D-mark floodgates. Make sure you okay this with Penuell before you make any rash promises.
Trevor
To: [email protected]
Subject: Bad Show
Jackie, whichever one of your many departments is in charge of the forced removal of non-essential indigenous persons from the World Summit precincts it hasn’t been very efficient. The PFO is furious. He was in Sandton yesterday and his motorcade was ambushed at two different traffic lights by shabbily dressed black men trying to sell plastic hangers clearly marked Property of the United Nations. What does that say about our vaunted security?
Smuttie
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Floodgates
Dear Trevor, we’ve already considered the Harksen option, thought we could arrange a quick presidential pardon. No can do, I’m afraid. Apparently Harksen hasn’t brutally murdered anyone.
Smuttie
To: [email protected]
Subject: A Ship Has Come In
Dear Smuttie, now that Manto’s persuaded the Medicines Control Council to backtrack on their shortsighted approval of nevirapine, I find myself with a bit of spare boodle. Tell Big Mama I can let her have R125-million on the understanding that if any of those quincy SOBs from the news- papers come snooping she says the money’s for the establishment of the Ubuntu Village as a permanent tourist attraction in Libya or Nigeria.
Trevor
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: A Ship Has Come In
Viva the revolution! Viva!
Smuttie
Archive: Previous columns by Robert Kirby