Spooked by colour coding

The huge picture on the front page of The Star said it all. There was Dubya, Master of the Universe, striding down a red carpet in the garden of the presidential guesthouse in Pretoria, with our own president trotting dutifully along beside him, trying to stay in the picture. Behind them, in soft focus, came the two first ladies.

Even at that distance you could see Zanele Mbeki’s mind trying to unravel how it was that she could have ended up, all these years later, trying to make polite conversation with Laura Bush in the pale winter sunshine of the highveld. ‘Ah, well,” said the thought bubble that was clearly visible to the naked eye above her head, ‘i-job-i-job.”

But study the picture closely. Don’t forget that everything about Darth Vader Jnr’s visit to the Dark Continent had been planned to the last minute detail back in Washington DC. African airports had been closed and African airspace sealed off for the duration of the mercifully fleeting state visit. No chances were taken about anything.

So it was interesting to observe the colour-coding that had been specially organised for the presidents and their respective spouses. Both leaders were wearing boring navy blue suits, and their wives somewhat frumpish two-piece outfits. No Madiba shirts or loud, zappy, colourful Afro outfits here.

But what a coincidence that the American president was wearing a bright red tie, to match his wife’s bright red outfit, and that Thabo was wearing a blue one, matching his wife’s suit.

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One is left with the unavoidable conclusion that the CIA was taking no chances, and that strong colour-coding was the only way to ensure that Dubya would not end up holding hands with the wrong wife when it came time to take the official post-banquet photographs.

You think I’m joking? The same newspaper had carried another CIA-sponsored story just days before that had used equally large photographs of Mojanku Gumbi and Condoleeza (sic) Rice to illustrate not just the fact that both these darkie ladies were the most trusted and intimate advisers of their respective presidents, but that they also looked exactly the same, to boot!

One shall not digress into an interrogation of the subliminal racism that makes a respected honky journalist opine that all black women look alike. (I mean, for a start, our Mojanku has a much cuter nose, and certainly does not rejoice in those steely, ‘bring-me-the-head-of-John-the-Baptist-and-anyone-else-who-might-be-out-there” kind of Condoleezy eyes. But let’s not get personal.)

The glaring fact is that clear colour-coding and large idiot cards held up in front of his face is the only way the richest nation on earth can keep its president looking on top of things. And you have to admire them for working like heck on this complex and difficult operation.

I guess this is why the said Condoleezza was not also walking along that red carpet at the president’s khaya, but had rather been relegated to the sidelines. No chances could be taken that, having got Dubya to hold hands with the right wife, he would then blow it all by going up to Condoleezza and saying, ‘Gee, thanks for a great lunch, Mrs Mbeki.” It would have been hard to cover that one up — rather like trying to explain the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

One is often inclined to feel increasing sympathy for the South African president’s way of dealing with things, particularly when you hold him up shoulder-to-shoulder with his American counterpart. Take the war on terror, just for one example.

America has gone out on a loud limb in its approach to this problem. Even while Dubya was on his state visit to South Africa, among other helpless countries on the continent, his government was imposing military sanctions on us for failing to toe the line on the issue of Americans’ immunity from prosecution for war crimes, wherever and whenever they might have been committed — which was a strange and undemocratic position in itself.

Yet while the US was bringing the message of anti-terrorist strategising to Africa, the whole world overlooked the fact that a terrorist threat of a different kind was being quietly dealt with by the South African government and its intelligence services.

The Boeremag is no joke. A large number of its members are currently on trial in Pretoria for plotting to overthrow the legitimately elected government of the country by force, justifying their antics with the claim that it was unconstitutional of the previous apartheid government to hand over the country to majority rule. The treason trial that these bonkers individuals are now being subjected to is being handled in a remarkably low-key fashion both by the government and the media.

One can only speculate that, from the government’s side at least, the reason for this low-key treatment is to contain a potentially inflammatory and destabilising situation — particularly given that the Boeremag, loony-right fringe that it appears to be, might nevertheless represent a substantial body of racist opinion that is still skulking in the dark recesses of the South African psyche.

The reasons for the media’s reticence are harder to fathom. But the impression one is left with is that, in tune with the thinking of the American government, terrorism is one thing when it comes in a brown skin, dressed in flowing Muslim robes and a long black beard, and quite another thing when it is perpetrated by the good-ol’, pink-cheeked boys from the platteland in their khaki shorts, whose agenda is based purely on racial superiority on the African continent.

Did somebody say something about colour-coding?

John Matshikiza is a fellow of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research