Language tends to get mangled when it is put in the mouths of politicians. Apart from unravelling all the pre-election razzmatazz as it has appeared in carefully worked out posters dangling from every telephone pole and lamp-post in the land, the ordinary man/ woman/hermaphrodite in the street has had to work out what politicians across the globe are really trying to say when they speak off the cuff, or even when they stick to carefully spin-doctored speeches. In fact even in their awkward body language.
Here in our dear old, long suffering, beloved country we’ve seen the president drop the stuffy, black suited, white-collar-on-blue-striped-shirt image for something closely resembling a lumberjack’s no-nonsense, go-gettem attire, criss-crossing the country to reassure white and black, rich and poor, old and young alike that he is their man. It’s a strategy that has clearly paid off, and handsomely at that.
But The Man, and his men and women, were prepared to stop at nothing to assure that victory would be in their pockets. Hence the bizarre sight of Thabo, son of the determinedly atheist Govan and Epainette Mbeki, and himself, one might say, a seemingly lapsed atheist, dancing the dance and flipping the ZCC flip on the stage at Moria, during the Zionist Christian Church’s annual Easter display of power and control over the minds, bodies, bank accounts and pocketbooks of millions of poor black people all over the Southern African region, stretching up as far as East and Central Africa. And grinning fit to bust, to boot.
That is, after all, what you have to do if you’re a politician — throw your back into it. And try not to show in your eyes that you are completely foxed when you are telling your constituency a blatant lie.
Across the world we had the Japanese prime minister telling his people that he would not waver in his support for America’s illegal invasion of Iraq, no matter what the cost. The Japanese people themselves were not that convinced, faced with the televised images of three of their co-citizens sitting on the floor, blindfolded, awaiting their fate at the hands of their seriously serious abductors in an anonymous building in an unnamed neighbourhood of an obscure Iraqi city.
Other politicians did not mince their words. They told their nationals to get the hell out of there, by the seat of their pants, if necessary — while they still had a seat to their pants that they could call their own. As any fool could have told them years ago, when the natives get restless in Iraq and Afghanistan and places like those, it’s really not worth hanging around, especially if you are a foreigner, an infidel, a Yankee or a friend of the Yankees — or a combination of all of the above.
Back across the water in America (home of the devil, as many Muslims have dubbed it) the lies fly slick, thick and quick. Condoleezza Rice had her moment in court, pointing fingers at everybody but herself in her role as National Security Adviser (Exxon Division) to her squinting, baffled, up-to-his-neck-in-it President, the ineffable George W Bush.
She was followed on to the Senate witness stand by Attorney General John Ashcroft, who dutifully pointed the finger way over Condy’s head and laid the blame for the 9/11 catastrophe on the administration of Bill “I-never-had-sex-with-that-woman-uh-what-do-you-mean-by-sex?” Clinton. Clinton should have known what those shifty Arabs were up to, said Ashcroft, but because the Democrats ran a sloppy ship with no intelligence to speak of, Bush, Cheyney and their boys (including the eminently boyish Condoleezza) walked into the White House like innocent lambs, with no notion whatsoever that there was a terrorist threat out there at all.
Yeah, right. Except that they had already laid plans for the invasion of Iraq long before the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan were brought down like a pack of cards, under circumstances that still leave many questions unanswered.
Bush and his gang had long decided that the best way to rally America behind them in the face of a crumbling economy and imminent exposure of the absence of the emperor’s much-touted new clothes was to stage a war or two in some dusty, distant country that stood no chance of hitting back.
Afghanistan was a sideshow in comparison to the main prize of ancient Iraq. And the war against Saddam Hussein was, initially, the kind of walk in the park they expected it to be.
But now comes the backlash — which, as I have said, could long have been anticipated. And the politicians are mangling language with more fervour than ever to explain why the long-declared end of hostilities is now at a more lethal level than ever.
Words like “insurgents” and “the enemy” are bandied about, swallowed, and regurgitated by foreign correspondents as if they are a bunch of mongooses hypnotised by a particularly stupid snake. No one bothers to suggest any longer that “insurgents” or “invaders” might be terms better applied to the United States Army.
And interestingly, no one is talking any longer about this “insurgency” being conducted by mad mullahs sending suicide bombers from across the borders of neighbouring, equally shifty Arab countries like Syria and Iran. Bush spin doctors have quietly accepted that this is a home-grown, Iraqi, anti-insurgency thing, and the only way to deal with it is to send more beefed up, porn-crazed Yankee soldiers into battle, and out the other side in body bags, if necessary.
So yes. If you’re a politician, get your timing right. Do the deed while everybody is looking the other way. In South Africa, we stage an election right on top of the Easter break, while everybody is full of Easter eggs, Moria backflips and Klipdrift, and feeling well disposed towards life in general, and the government of the day in particular.
In the US of A, they carefully stage their presidential election in November, while everyone, including those whose ancestors came across in slave ships, is celebrating Thanksgiving (for the Lord’s deliverance of marauding missionaries to the New World) — and the turkeys, the last remaining full-blooded native Americans, are making a failed attempt to head for the hills, ending up, roasted and stuffed, on the all-American Thanksgiving table.
Like I said, all over the world, it’s nothing but a stitch up. The trick is to survive it.