The Democratic Alliance did nothing wrong. All the DA did was discuss, negotiate, arrange, set up and do all the paperwork in order to accept an R800 000 donation from an international fraudster. This feverish DA activity was to include supplying a United States bank with an official-looking letter the DA was told was necessary before Harksen’s money
could be transferred to its new laundry.
When all this murky activity was exposed by journalists, the same DA claimed that, since it never actually received the money from Jurgen Harksen, it was guiltless of any wrongdoing. If you rob a bank and happen to drop the loot while the cops are chasing you, you are not guilty of bank robbery either.
These protestations of innocence are reminiscent of Bill Clinton admitting that although he’d smoked marijuana when at university he never actually inhaled. According to Clinton this absolved him. In order to “smoke” marijuana you have to do more than just grab a brightly glowing three-blader, suck great globules of stifling cannabis fumes into your mouth. To qualify you have to inhale these fumes. Smoking dope is an all-or-nothing affair.
Later in his career Clinton was also to re-define what he’d been enjoying in the Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky, one of the White House staff-virgins: “I never had sex with that woman,” said Clinton on national television. “All she did was give me a blowjob while my cigar had a quick monologue with her vagina. What is more, neither of them inhaled.”
It’s easy to understand why the DA finds this kind of doublespeak so attractive. The DA’s impeccable nightcrawler, Tony Leon, is, after all, a downmarket clone of Clinton and that other flash-over-substance “statesman”, Tony Blair. Only after a literal barrage from the British press did New Labour send back the millions of pounds it had accepted from Bernie Ecclestone, the Grand Prix supremo, who wanted tobacco advertising on Formula One cars excluded from the general United Kingdom ban. Before the press got hold of the story and “grossly distorted” it, all Bernie had done was to have dinner at Number 10 Downing Street. Indeed Bernie might have been one of the lucky ones when, on one auspicious occasion, halfway through the damson and apple tansy, Cherie Blair winched out one of her sumptuous blue-veined tits and proceeded to breastfeed baby Leo Blair. Right there at the table.
Watching Tony Leon on television last Sunday evening was like watching a crude replay of Blair and Clinton. And the reason I call Tony Leon a nightcrawler is not only in order to praise him. Tony’s a nightcrawler in another sense, too: nightcrawlers are big juicy worms used as live bait in freshwater fishing.
When, last Sunday, Tony Leon faced questions about Jurgengate it was like watching a nightcrawler wriggling pitifully on a hook; not that nightcrawlers have such shifty eyes or tend to proffer oily little smiles whenever they think they’ve scored a winner, it’s just the way they wriggle when anyone plunges a great big hook in them, as Sally Burdett was doing.
Tony ignored Sally’s first cruel thrust and instead launched into a impassioned complaint about the SABC’s political bias, as had been evidenced in their handling of the Harksen-DA story the previous evening. Sounding and looking a lot like an enraged washerwoman, Tony said the SABC was not only biased but deeply unconstitutional and full of sell-out journalists, as well — which is all rather old hat. Calling the SABC corrupt is like saying if you fall into water you will get wet — as any nightcrawler will confirm.
Having got that out of the way Tony Leon generously allowed Sally to ask him about Jurgengate. In response, he went into a sort of frenzied overdrive wriggle. According to Tony Leon it’s quite okay for the ANC to accept large donations from Herr Harksen but God help anyone else who does. Sally Burdett eventually had to use a bludgeon to get him to answer the question about the apparent contradiction between recent DA behaviour and its oft-stated commitment to “clean government”.
At this Tony damn near wriggled right off the hook. He complained bitterly about local journalists who, he said, were so profoundly stupid they’d actually believed all that shit he’d been talking about clean government.
Asked whether it was politically kosher to be seen in public with an international con artist like Jurgen Harksen, Tony ejaculated his most lubricious smile and said that what the SABC should really be asking is why Thabo Mbeki and a few others had also been seen in public with the very same international con artist. Or, for that matter, why the ANC was willing to accept more than a billion rands from all manner of evil people all over the world.
He then slipped into rave mode and starting babbling uncontrollably about anti-retrovirals and justice and democratic values and the many other things that the DA was “busy putting on the table”.
Sally Burdett should have tried to breastfeed him.
Archive: Previous columns by Robert Kirby