Were I to name and describe a certain cabinet minister as looking like an emaciated spaniel undergoing a haemorrhoid crisis, I would be guilty of being offensively personal. In describing people — especially important people — journalists are supposed to show restraint when it comes to making fun of things over which the people in question have no control — like their looks.
Cartoonists, on the other hand, are satirically frustrated by no such tetherings. And it’s a darned good thing too. When they caricature important people, cartoonists can be as personally offensive as they like. They can and often do wildly exaggerate the physical features of their subjects. Cartoonists have a free hand in these things — that is, until they start poking well-intentioned fun at Muslim values and beliefs. In saying the above, I am not disparaging cartoonists, merely expressing my intense jealousy.
Having got that fragile issue out of the way, let me move on to the subject of an important person called Alec Erwin, Minister of Public Enterprises, and about whose surface geography I’ll waive making unseemly remarks. Recently, Minister Erwin called a press conference which turned out to be a magnanimous public acknowledgement that he is not satisfied with merely being in the Cabinet; he wants to be its designated ninny as well. On the afternoon before the recent municipal elections, Alec Erwin committed an act which, even by today’s standards, was of excruciating political vulgarity. At this press conference, he announced to a somewhat startled set of journos that the failure in one of the generators at the Koeberg nuclear power station was the result of sabotage.
Although later he was to deny having used the word “sabotage”, Erwin most definitely did use it. Thanks to the sharp-eyed lads and lasses at e.tv news, a clip was preserved and broadcast of Alec saying, verbatim: “Any interference with an electricity installation is an exceptionally serious crime. It is sabotage.”
A gleeful media pounced on this spectacular new Erwin delusion and ran with it. In response, the good minister hastily called another press conference, this one, as it turned out, in order to corroborate his ninnyism. Surrounding himself with a couple of heavies in the shape of Western Cape Premier Ibrahim Rasool and he of the brokebank mountain salary, Thulani Gcabashe, CEO of Eskom, Alec did some spastic backpedalling. Asked why he said the damage to the Koeberg generator was sabotage, he worked up one of his smarmiest smiles and replied, verbatim: “I didn’t use the term sabotage.” He didn’t protect his back by saying something like he didn’t remember using the word, or that he hadn’t meant it in that sense. He just lied about it.
Worldwide, Cabinet ministers are allowed, indeed, are encouraged, to dissimulate, mislead and distort to their hearts’ content. The one thing they are not supposed to do is tell full-frontal lies. So let’s have no talk about “porkies” or “slips of the tongue” or “being economical with the truth” or any of a myriad side-step metaphors. This was a straightforward, no-frills-attached lie. And if minister Erwin has any political dignity, he will resign for having told it.
Anyone taking bets on that eventuality?
Alec certainly didn’t squander any of his precious dignity stockpile at the second press conference. At his unctuous best, he desperately tried to weasel and whinge his way out of the contorted political opportunism which had led him to make his original and preposterous claims about sabotage. The intelligence meltdown was so intense our handsome black-and-white cat actually got up, hissed at the television screen, and walked out of the room with his tail erect. What a critic!
Lumped in among a wretched array of backtrack excuses was Alec’s provocative new coinage: a one-size-fits-all factor he calls “human instrumentality”, a faux erudite phrase which, please God, does not append to that cheerless glossary of “human failings”, “human disasters” and “human balls-ups” we routinely associate with politicians.
What “human instrumentality” actually means is anybody’s guess. The word “instrumentality” can be used when specifying the instruments in a musical ensemble — how many violins, how many cellos, how many woodwinds, etcetera — and where, anyway, the preferred word is “instrumentation”. The term “human instrumentality” is meaningless. Unless, of course, the saboteur who dropped the bolt into the generator was playing a banjo at the same time.
The whole electricity supply shambles reveals a top-down government bureaucracy once again sorely out of touch with little else than its own editions of reality. The calling of an alarmist press conference at the 11th hour before an election was a ploy which demonstrated a searing contempt for the intelligence of the public. Does Erwin really believe the ANC voter-base is so bog-stupid it can be served up bollocks like this? Seems so.
Oh well, all is not lost. Thanks to putrid mismanagement and planning, the entire country is facing two or three years of power shortages, but at least the R20-billion Gautrain is still going ahead. For all we know, they’ll pull off a miracle and get things done in time for the Soccer World Cup. Anyone taking bets on that eventuality?