A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday — Alexander Pope (1688 to 1744)
By happy synchronicity, the above quotation popped up on the *Wordsmith website the very morning I was starting on this column. It couldn’t have been better suited to my subject, which is the extraordinary statement that came from President Thabo Mbeki’s spokesperson last week. In short, he said that Mr Mbeki has acknowledged that his policy of quiet diplomacy has so far failed to resolve the Zimbabwe crisis. As the saying goes: better late than never.
It is, of course, easy to gloat about this admission coming from Mr Mbeki, considering that on matters such as Zimbabwe and Aids, he has been about as flexible as a railway sleeper. Everyone short of the barber’s cat has been screaming about the obvious futility of quiet diplomacy for about three years.
Reading Pope’s observation of about 300 years ago, we might ask ourselves whether the president, having owned that he has been wrong about Zimbabwe, emerges a tad wiser. I am a little doubtful because, when you read the rest of what his spokesperson, Bheki Khumalo, had to say, you see that the retraction is only partial.
Diplomatic efforts will continue, said Khumalo, on behalf of his boss. There is no alternative to dialogue. None of that irresponsible talk of sanctions and turning off the lights or anything else that might work.
My mole in the presidency informs me that new dialogue plans are already at the implementation stage, and that a fresh assault on the Mugabe political lunatic asylum is imminent. First to be introduced will be a policy of Faintly Audible Diplomacy (FAD). To hear FAD in operation will require the use of highly specialised audio-detection equipment tuned to secret diplomatic frequencies in the Extremely Low Frequency bands. These frequencies will not be released to the general media, as their use will inevitably be distorted to serve colonialist/racist ends. The only exception will be the SABC’s resident African National Congress vuvuzelu virtuosi, Jimi Matthews and Snuki Zikalala (PhD Bulgaria), for use in the Thabo Mbeki Show that is broadcast seven days a week, thinly disguised as a news bulletin.
After another three years of failing to have the slightest effect, FAD will gently be phased out and a new policy will be introduced. This one will be called Not Easily Perceived Additional Dialogue (Nepad), and will entail the execution of a multi-pronged blitz on what is identified as the ‘Mugabe Underbelly”. Nepad will kick off with a ‘tickle period” intended to demonstrate the essentially non-confrontational approach of the South African government.
First of all, Mrs Grace Mugabe — the real power behind the Harare throne — will get a free trip to London on the South African presidential jet, be put up in a suite at Claridges and given a £250 000 shopping voucher for Harrods. While in the store, Grace will, apparently quite by chance, bump into the South African Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who will have been lying in ambush behind the Princess Di Memorial Underwear display.
Nkosazana will take Grace to lunch in the Harrods Exorbitant-Calories snack-bar. Over their sixth crème flambé, Nkosazana will insinuate into the conversation a few notions from her forthcoming political manual, Helpful Hints for Third World Power-Maddened Genocidal Dickheads, in the hope that Grace will whisper similar trifles into Bob’s ear the next time she is nibbling it.
While all this new-age diplomacy is under way, similar imperceptible pressure will be exerted on Mugabe himself, by his colleagues in the Southern African Development Community.
In his role as moral exemplar and chief caviar-taster for the SADC, President Mbeki will take Bob aside and inform him that unless he bucks stumps and starts behaving less like a baobab-sized political schmuck, there will be no more freebies at future South African presidential inaugurations. Furthermore, Mbeki will withdraw his weekly column, My Way & How to Get It, from Bob’s and Namibian President Sam Nujoma’s newspaper, The New Sunday Times.
Other high-profile functionaries in the Mugabe causerie will writhe under lashings of the same Nepad whip. Zimbabwe’s clamorous Minister of Information, Jonathan Moyo, will be persuaded yet again to change his career horse. For an undisclosed ‘sunset settlement” Moyo will leave Zimbabwean politics to take up his new position as CEO of the South African Airways cabin staff.
I do hope the presidency does not condemn me, either for releasing details of their carefully fashioned future plans for solving the typically overstated-by-the-media Zimbabwe crisis, and for deploying the decomposed ruminations of some forgotten **Dwem in defence of my arguments.
* Wordsmith is a delightful site where, for nothing but the love of language, they send you a new (and often exotic) word every day. It is quite free and always has a pithy quotation included. To subscribe, e-mail [email protected] with the word ‘subscribe” and your e-mail address in the subject line
** Dead White European Male