Dear Auntie Robert,
As an ordained rainbow pessimist, last week’s aggravated pronouncements by President Mbeki sent my worst imaginings into a tailspin. As I read our president’s rousing “wake-up” speech to his ANC colleagues, a feeling of intense dismay slowly cloaked me. Here was I, content to go on feeding my racist prejudices from a seemingly endless smorgasbord. The crime rate was soaring beyond my wildest fantasies; the rand was collapsing; corruption was going into overdrive; self-enrichment and the flaunting of power were at levels never reached before. To cap it all, down in sleepy Pietermaritzburg, Mr Zuma was at last entering the circle of enlightenment in his own edition of the Divine Comedy. With darkness and error, inferno and purgatorio safely behind him, and led by his spiritual shepherd, Unkempt J Unkempt, he was starting to be cleansed in beatific legal fires.
Into my cell in the cosy white supremacist asylum intruded Mr Mbeki’s unwelcome thunderings. With great alarm I heard him command his high ANC officials to cut down on their plunder and rapacity, start putting the interests of ordinary citizens ahead of those of their close family members. I speak for all the other inmates in the asylum when I say the last thing we want to hear is our president ranting away just like a stereotypical white bigot fulminating over his vol au vent at some Sandton dinner party.
Is this a sea-change in Mr Mbeki, or was he just sending an oblique message to the Pietermaritzburg Bench? — Confused and Embittered, Houghton
Dear Confused and Embittered,
You have no real reason to feel this way. With his fiery speech Mr Mbeki was doing what all astute political leaders have to do from time to time: shake their fists and issue pulsating roarings. It’s called the wrath of the righteous and has been used by astute political leaders since time immemorial. What such a leader does is spring up suddenly and give alarmist speeches saying that some kind of national crisis is underway. Once the imaginary national crisis is up and running, the leader pontificates about how the country is going down the tubes. In other words, give vent to the wrath of the righteous. In doing so, he also automatically casts himself in the role of the country’s saviour.
The technique is as old as hypocrisy.
Dear Auntie Robert,
A week or so ago the sword of Damocles Skweyiya came scything down on no less than 1 792 civil servants found guilty of ripping off public money to the tune of some R11-million.
More or less as expected, the guilty civil servants are now being allowed to pay back the money they stole. No interest will be charged. They will be allowed to take as long as they like to repay what they stole. Their names will be kept secret. They will keep their jobs.
In one salutary case the theft amounted to just on R75 000. The unspeakable civil service shithead who stole this is being allowed to pay it back at the crippling rate of R200 a month. This means it will only take 31 years for the debt to be settled. The unspeakable civil service shithead currently earns just on R91 000 a year. How do you explain that? — Jennifer, Somerset East
Dear Jennifer,
Try to imagine yourself as an average contemporary civil servant, fair, brimming over with a sense of entitlement as you eye a tasteful new Joshua Doore combination queen-size trampoline-bed, kitchen dresser and condom storage cubby-hole in matching “Dying Bushveld Flame-Finish”. Wouldn’t you feel it was your democratic right to steal? In the remote off chance of your theft ever being revealed, rest assured that the worst that will happen is that your name will be kept secret, you’ll keep your job and you’ll be allowed to pay back what you stole at rates entirely suitable to you. And you’ll get to keep the furniture.
It’s called democracy.
Dear Auntie Robert,
And what of our delightful honourable Minister of Land and Agricultural Affairs, Lulu Xingwana, who, sans boarding pass, barged her way onto a local SAA flight and demanded that a paying business-class passenger vacate “her”, the minister’s, seat. When there was protest, the minister threw an honourable little tantrum.
Minister Xingwana was allowed to “hijack” the seat and the fare-paying business-class passenger was dispatched by the aircraft’s captain to sit on one of the cabin crew’s take-off seats. Do you think the captain of the aircraft made the right decision? — Ex-SAA Customer
Dear Ex-SAA Customer,
I think the captain should have taken the honourable Lulu by the ear and thrown her off the plane — with a sharp kick up the butt for added emphasis. However, this captain was one of the new breed who have changed the gleaming gold stripes on their sleeves for gleamimg yellow ones. What a pathetic tosspot.
And lickspittle South African Airways, itself, did what it always does when some grandiose politician throws his or her weight around on its aircraft, shoves common passengers out of their seats and generally behaves with all the style of a street-corner thug. SAA sent a grovelling letter of apology to the grandiose politician.
SAA’s not called a national airline for nothing.