I was hoping that I would be able to avoid writing about the now scandalous R700 000 ‘Gravy Plane” holiday trip to the United Arab Emirates, taken recently by our highly regarded Deputy President, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (DP PM-N), her husband, the wife of a Cabinet minister and several of Ms Mlambo-Ngcuka’s own and her secretary’s children.
Not only did I want to avoid whingeing on about that excursion, but also about another one which cost generous South African taxpayers a mere R75 000. This was for the 13-minute flip the deputy president took to Sun City in order to open a women’s golf tournament. Here she was flown in an intercontinental jet, which resulted in our highly regarded Defence Minister, Mosiuoa Lekota, appearing on SABC television news in a state of fastidious apoplexy to confirm that it was the deputy president’s ordained right to travel in such jaunty fashion. The South African Air Force (SAAF) was to blame for having used the wrong size of luxury jet.
All this was not a nice thing for Lekota to be forced to do when so recently he has recovered from a worrying cardiac incident. But it did at least show that, even if a bit quarrelsome, his atria and ventricles still throb to the African National Congress metronome.
As I say, I wanted to write about something more discouraging of the opinion that the titans who rule us are so constrained in their democratic missions they cannot squander time travelling on Africa’s pleasant surface. My optimisms were dashed when I drove past Tuinhuis and saw a familiar red garter belt hanging out of an upper window; a secret signal from my presidential mole, Deep Keel, summoning me to another clandestine meeting in the kitchen appliances aisle at the Observatory Spar. While I fondled a very reasonably priced Korean kettle, she slipped a rolled-up document into its spout. All I then had to do was buy the kettle.
The document turned out to be a blurred photocopy of a memorandum addressed to presidential spokesperson, Murphy Morobe. It both forewarns him and instructs how he should respond if the details of future air trips by the deputy president are ‘leakened”. Such leakenings, the memorandum warns, will result in ‘yet further and typical displays of outrage by the white-controlled media”.
Morobe is advised of planned air-trips using defence force aircraft during early February.
- On February 3, the DP PM-N will fly from Waterkloof Airbase to Gallagher Estate in order to give the keynote address at the Limpopo Smell-Impaired Podiatrists Convention. A heavy troop-transport helicopter will be used as the DP PM-N will be accompanied by nine advisers, four politically correct joke-writers, six bodyguards and approximately 22 assembled grandparents, great-aunts and uncles of the brother-in-law of a casual acquaintance of her husband. Respond sullenly to verminous media enquiries thus: Total cost for this 11-minute trip was kept under R160 000. The trip was deemed necessary because the DP PM-N’s work schedule could not afford the 18 extra minutes it would take to go by road.
- On February 5, the DP PM-N will unfortunately have to downgrade to using the 11-seater SAAF Citation executive jet when she travels from Wonderboom airfield to Lanseria so as to transfer to the 18-seater SAAF Gulfstream 900 which needs the longer Lanseria runway when it takes her on a 88-minute journey to Harare. There she will be the official South African observer at the formal ejection from Zimbabwe of the last two Médécins Sans Frontières doctors. Respond patronisingly to verminous media enquiries thus: Suggestions by the media that these two air trips cost more than R350 000 are dismissed with the scorn they deserve.
- On February 12, the DP PM-N will use the presidential jet to travel from Cape Town to Johannesburg International. Respond crankily to verminous media enquiries thus: This usage will cost R120 000 but the public should be reminded that the DP PM-N was exercising her right to use this modality of travel whenever President Thabo Mbeki is in South Africa for longer than three consecutive nights.
- On the same day, the DP PM-N will travel from Johannesburg International domestic arrivals to Johannesburg International overseas departures using a SAAF Boeing 707 tanker aircraft. Respond jovially to verminous media enquiries by telling them to get stuffed.
- On the following day, the DP PM-N’s presence will be required in London where she will deliver an address on the need for special cranes to be erected on the upper Thames so that northern bottle-nosed whales can be hoisted out of the water if they swim too close to the House of Commons. She will be accompanied on this trip by our highly retarded Minister of Environmental Affairs, Marthinus ‘Kortbrein” van Schalkwyk and the massed grandchildren of 22 brand new ex-New National Party-now-ANC parliamentarians. Respond irascibly to verminous media enquiries thus: South African Airways has generously allowed the government a 15% reduction of its normal charter rates for a Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet. Give the media wimps a little sneer when you add that the R3,8-million the trip cost is just a drop in some as yet undiscovered ocean of poverty.