I’ve been talking over this ‘let’s ban Christmas” thing with my daughter. She has been asking, for the first time, whether Father Christmas actually exists. I don’t know where she gets these notions from. She is barely able to read the Koran or the Bible, let alone the newspapers, and has no conception of politics, as far as I know. But it is something that the African National Congress government — along with its notorious joiners from the New National Party (NNP) — have brought to our family hearth.
And yet it is a serious issue. If you ban Christmas, how can there still be a Father Christmas? If there is no Father Christmas, my daughter asks, who brings you the presents? Father Christmas’s wife, or his dog?
I think I hit the same problem when I was about the same age, that is, six and a half or so. How do you reconcile the security of your life with the discovery, for the first time, that not everything you have been led to believe can be taken for granted? I’m sure my parents had the same problem dealing with me at the time. The answer is that there is no answer.
Some of the more popular press, as you will recall, have chosen to do an instant, unreconstructed, unedited analysis of the government’s bland statement that it needs to revise the many public holidays that we have (and that we have also inherited) and possibly make some changes. The government spokesperson said that even Christmas might not be immune to reconsideration under this radical new policy. The press picked it up and blazoned it all over the front pages, as only the press can. But it makes you think. What will we do if there is no more Christmas, after all these years of taking it for granted? What will be next to go?
Just like the loss of Christmas, there is now to be no more NNP. What is the world coming to?
Marthinus ‘Kortbroek” van Schalkwyk announced last weekend that he, and presumably the rump of his party, architects of grand apartheid, would henceforth be marching in the ranks of the ANC. I think we should be afraid. I think we should be very afraid — particularly since the ruling party seems to have accepted the aforesaid supplicants into its ranks without a quarrel.
It is not just about the mutterings from disgruntled members of the NNP about marching into the dark and ‘a fear of the unknown”. There is much more to it than that.
The ANC is hardly an unknown quantity. On the other hand, perhaps it is. The movement has been so adept at changing its personality over the years that keen observers might indeed have cause to be concerned about what it is about to become with this latest influx.
There were huge upheavals in the 1940s and 1950s when the movement — which started life, as you will recall, as the Native National Congress, in response to increasing loss of native (that is, black) empowerment in their native land — somewhat reluctantly joined forces with the various groups representing coloureds, Indians and, above all, communists. The latest swing appears aimed at finally absorbing the last remaining constituency on the South African map — the Afrikaner heartland. And the traditional leaders of that heartland have now officially agreed to the union.
It is almost as if the devil himself had decided to give up the ghost and apply to rejoin the mainstream church. Who is left to bark on the sidelines? The next thing we know, even Tony Leon will be starting to shout ‘Amandla!” and asking for permission to toyi-toyi on the main stage with the leaders of the party faithful at one of their rare party congresses. It is an appalling thought.
With ‘Prime Evil” Eugene de Kock now blowing the whistle long and loud at his former colleagues in the death squads that were the backbone of the then NP’s famous ‘total onslaught” against the likes of the ANC (and its ever-widening band of allies); and leading members of the so-called ‘Boeremag” spilling the beans on their comrades in a show-trial in Pretoria, South Africa’s political life has become a fascinating circus indeed.
There are two ways of looking at it. One is to say that the ANC has scored a remarkable triumph in bringing the disparate areas of this wide, wonderful and often deeply puzzling country into the unified and unifying fold of the great and the good — as personified by the likes of Lillian Ngoyi, Albert Luthuli, Helen Joseph, Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela and others.
The other way of looking at it is to ask yourself whether a one-party state is the right way to go. But there appear to be few other options. Even Kortbroek is saying so, presumably with the agreement of his closest lieutenants.
So this is where we stand. And with exclusive and total power like this at your disposal, it should come as no surprise that Smuts Ngonyama should feel confident that Father Christmas can gradually be phased out of the national consciousness.
Of course this might, in the long run, prove to be a good thing. What role does innocent fantasy have in the grand scheme of things, anyway? Who needs Christmas? In fact, it will prove lighter on our pockets at the end of the year.
But there will still be many of us who will miss the idea of reindeers in Africa and fat white men in red suits squeezing down our non-existent chimneys bearing gifts of friendship in their sacks.
On the other hand, maybe that will be the new role for Kortbroek and his born-again, toyi-toying band of brothers. You never know.