Now that all the fuss and bother have died down, I find myself feeling a sort of empathy for our genial Minister of Safety and Security, Charles ”Whingers Beware” Nqakula. I have seldom seen such a flurry of outrage and hurt feelings in response to an idle remark tossed off in Parliament by the minister. Telling every grumbling ingrate who dares to raise a questioning eyebrow at Charles Nqakula’s efforts to get crime under control to piss off back into the colonial West they came from is taking things a bit far. But for heaven’s sake, Charles was only having a mid-term crisis when he went ballistic. When you’re like the Honourable Minister of Safety and Security and you’ve carried out your Cabinet mission with the inordinate lack of success that Charles Nqakula has, it’s not at all surprising that the media have been a touch more hostile and racist than is really necessary.
I’ve been extraordinarily busy these past few weeks, getting my disgusting new and thought-provoking comedy, The Secret Letters of Jan van Riebeeck, rehearsed and ready for its stunningly politically incorrect world premiere at the Grahamstown Festival (On Friday night at 9pm at PJs, Mail & Guardian readers are urged to attend as we need as intelligent an audience as possible), but I did find a hurried hour or two to go and have a quiet chat with a minor media liaison officer at Safety and Security.
After waiting in his ante-chamber for only 20 minutes, I was frisked and dry-cleaned and sent in to meet Dr Lester Maqhangabodwe, Fifth Assistant Media Spokesperson to the Honourable Minister of Safety and Security. Dr Maqhangabodwe was dressed in a tastefully restrained ivory Cuban boulevardier suit, sitting in a moleskin leather throne behind a badminton court-sized walnut desk. He looked up at me and indicated a small shiny stool in front of his desk.
”Sorry about that, but the office Rottweiler’s got a touch of a nasty tummy bug that’s been running around. Perch yourself on the upwind end of the desk.”
”I hate to come up here and waste your precious time with trivialities,” I began in a neighbourly tone, ”but the furore over your honourable minister’s whinger remarks just won’t go away. I see that the Free State Agricultural Union is again threatening to secede from the republic and join up with Oranje.”
”The Free State Agricultural Union is always blowing that kind of mealie-gas,” replied Dr Lester Maqhangabodwe affably. ”But what they don’t realise is that by threatening to go and join Oranje, they are doing exactly what the honourable minister wants them to do. Shut up or ship out.”
”I’m sure your honourable minister is also aware of what happened in Zimbabwe when all the productive farms were closed down by honourable president, Robert Mugabe. Two years on and that country is said to be on the edge of a national famine. If all the farmers in the Free State Agricultural Union and, for that matter, all the other farmers, decide to pack up and whinge off to Oranje, won’t that have the same disastrous effect here?”
”What amuses me about you media pessimists,” said Dr Lester Maqhangabodwe, slowly shaking his head, ”is the way you always fail to perceive the subversive effects of government policies. Minister Nqakula is in charge of safety and security, not agriculture. Minister Nqakula knows that if all the farmers, as you say, whinge off to Oranje, there is an obvious subversive benefit. When you’ve got no more farmers you’ve also got no more farm murders. Quod erat demonstrandum, as you Eurocentrics are wont to say?”
”Goodness me,” I muttered.”I never saw it that way.” I knotted my brow thoughtfully. ”But, once the farmers are out of the way, what will become of the rest of we whingers?”
”Don’t go running off with the wrong idea,” said Dr Lester Maqhangabodwe. ”The honourable minister does not want every last whinger to rush to the phone to get quotes from Stuttafords or Elliot International. He knows that keeping a manageable apportionment of colonialist whingers is necessary to any thriving young economy. For a start, think of all the fun to be had confiscating the brutal firearms the whingers still insist on keeping next to their beds.”
”How very democratic,” I murmured. ”To change emphasis, how does the honourable minister feel about the current alarming rise in robbery and associated violent crime? Does he feel any personal responsibility for this?”
”Typically, you are again placing the blame on the wrong ministry. The alarming rise in robbery and associated violent crime has actually been caused by the Ministry of Minerals and Energy. When the electricity supply keeps plunging whole suburbs into stygian darkness, there is a quite involuntary rise in robbery and associated violent crime. In the Western Cape, Eskom actually runs whole-page advertisements in the newspapers so that the thieves, hijackers, murderers and rapists know exactly where and when the lights are going to be extinguished. So go and talk to the spokespersons for Ministry of Minerals and Energy.”
At that moment the door to the office burst open and a rather grumpy-looking Rottweiler dragged in the burly security guard attached to it by a chain.
”Ah, there’s Hermann,” said Dr Lester Maqhangabodwe. ”Try not to make eye contact as you edge out.”