Dear Comrades All,
So sorry not to be able to write to you individually and thank you for the veritable tsunami of supporting letters, faxes, e-mails and get-well cards that have come my way over the past and somewhat taxing year. You have no idea how your kindness and sympathies have swamped me in love and loyalty, helped me to keep my senses of humour and proportion in place. Viva my faithful support base! Viva! — as that dreadful Kasrils chappie would say.
Things were going so well at the beginning of last year. Full of optimism, I was off to Burundi and another set of fruitless peace talks. Without the limelight of the terrible press drenching me, I was able to take a little detour on the way home to drop in on that true titan among struggle buddies, Mugger Bob — as he’s affectionately called in Southern African Development Community peer review circles. A couple of days in Mugger’s company and it becomes very clear that his way of running a country is the only one that holds out any hope for us becoming like his excellent country. Unfortunately, the visit went a bit sour when Mugger testily turned down my request for a private cash loan to help me finish off my traditional village.
Still, it was most encouraging to see how Mugger, using the most elegant of democratic methods, has managed to expunge Zimbabwe of the last remnants of degenerate colonial influence. His clean-up work can be seen everywhere. There’s hardly a stretch of working Zimbabwe railway left. The roads are falling into ruin. Electricity and vastly overrated Western medical standards are on the wane, HIV is running riot, the hospitals overflow, all aeroplanes except Mugger’s personal chopper are grounded, a litre or three of petrol or diesel is like manna from heaven. All this progress and not even a whisper of praise from the Blair controlled press.
Anyway, no sooner was I back from that trip than I was pitched headlong into the next phase of our national moral regeneration initiative. I was on a busy round of giving inspiring speeches to ethical stakeholders, while carrying out the sometimes pesky duties of being deputy pres. Thabo’s frolicsome international schedule was keeping him out of the country so often, I had to step in to run things. Quite suddenly, before you could say frigate-combat-suites, my close friend and financial Chef du Jour, poor Shabby, was up on trial for corruption and a whole mess of other charges dreamed up by a certain black mamba lurking in the national prosecution undergrowth.
Worse was to come when the judge, some pompous remnant of the English riff-raff that still infests the courts, jumped on Shabby like an enraged cat on to a mouse! Worse, he used the occasion to fire a few heartless barbs in my direction. In effect, he said that I was of the same criminal cast as the man he’d just sentenced to 15 years in the jug! Ever since Dingaan, people like that judge have had no respect.
Up north, it was manna from heaven all over again. The judge delivered a great big brimming basketful of it to our saintly leader’s larder. Ten minutes later, I am being ”relieved of my duties” as Deputy Pres! On national television! No sooner was that foul deed done than the same national prosecuting heavies lay charges of corruption on me!
Any reasonable democratic soul would think I’d had enough. Now the newspapers came at me like starving hyenas to a dying buffalo, tearing and ripping off as much flesh as they could get into their word processors.
While all this was going on, I can’t describe adequately the relief and emotional succour I received from my comrades in the trade unions and among the youth leaders. There’s nothing as spiritually comforting as walking into a court of law to face trumped-up charges while 70 000 of your faithful fans shake the ground with their bellowing and dancing.
Then, out of the blue, came the suspiciously timely termination of a certain fountain of money. With their cash flow on hold, things changed very rapidly. The moment Brett Kebbers died my crutches in the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress Youth League started to buckle. On top of that came the quite ridiculous sexual charge and, if it wasn’t for the good offices of my friend, Police Commissioner Oswald Reddy, the press would have had another feeding frenzy. Oswald took me to court so early in the morning only because he knew 70 000 of my support base would severely disrupt central Jo’burg traffic. Yet the press managed to make a conspiracy of it.
And as for the turncoat South African Broadcasting Corporation. Words fail me! One moment I’m all set up for an interview, the chance to tell my side of the story, the next Snuki’s had a little call from His Master’s Voice at the Union Buildings.
And so a new year and a new set of challenges to the Constitution have got under way. Once again, my warmest thanks for all the moral nourishment you have offered me over these past terrible 12 months.
When I triumph, you will not be forgotten.
Yours in democracy,
Jacob