”Is that Thabo Mbeki?” giggled an asinine blonde with the deadly seriousness of the HI virus.
Delivering his congratulatory message to the general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Zwelinzima Vavi, and the newest Mrs Vavi (née Noluthando Norah Mathebe), at a dimly lit nightclub on Durban’s Mahatma Gandhi Road (née Point Road), Willies Mchunu, the African National Congress’s speaker in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature, would have been mortified.
Being mistaken for Mbeki in KwaZulu-Natal can have all sorts of nasty repercussions: one could almost imagine the speaker scanning the room for a certain tracksuited provincial minister, half-praying that none of the gathered businessmen was actually Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and making a mental note to prioritise a trusty razor — the corridors of power are dark, nasty alleyways smelling of fear-induced pee, especially if one is hirsute.
Luckily, the only provincial minister present was the Minority Front’s Amichand Rajbansi who, despite his sports portfolio, has probably never seen the inside of a tracksuit.
Last week’s celebratory function, organised and funded by businessmen close to ANC presidential hopeful Jacob Zuma, appeared a pallid comparison to the actual wedding at the Oakwood Farm near the Cradle of Mankind in Gauteng.
No JZ to serenade the couple with that metaphorical ode to true love, which is said to have aphrodisiacal qualities similar to unbottled Viagra on young women; no Jeff Radebe, minister of transport, and no Vivian Reddy accompanied by Sorisha Naidoo, ”his good friend and TV actress” as she has been dubbed by one Sunday paper.
Gathered instead were provincial federation heavyweights such as provincial Cosatu leader Zet Luzipho and Cosatu first vice-president Sdumo Dlamini.
The Cosatu president was apparently off on bin-bag detail, a little bird whispered. Whether he was auditioning for a gig at the South African Municipal Workers’ Union or merely making deliveries of a browner hue (no, not R20 notes) to former comrades could not be ascertained.
Regardless. This clearly was not a gathering of the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labour reborn.
An early American trade union, the Knights didn’t allow bankers, alcohol manufacturers or Asians into their ranks.
The presence of businessmen of Asian descent can be banked on, in the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing in KwaZulu-Natal, it seems.
A motley crew of sullen-looking, jewellery-encrusted businessmen, distinctly ill at ease, filled up tables behind the comrades. Each occasionally delivered furtive, beady-eyed glances around the room, relentlessly repeating the Dr Phil-induced self-help mantra: ”I will be the next Schabir Shaik! I will be the next Schabir Shaik!”
Occasionally, a disgruntled businessman-turned-comrade-turned-businessman would walk past, slurp on a Johnnie Black and hiss through his teeth about sycophantic ”new hangers-on who weren’t there back in the day”, attempting to inveigle themselves with today’s leaders.
Given their discomfort, the lead singer of the tepid cover band — who bore a striking resemblance to a long-lost button-smoking Shaik brother — probably had a better chance at embeddedness.
One would presume these were the ”close friends” who were not quite close enough to make the original guest list in Gauteng.
Vavi’s speech was illuminating: allegations of using the Cosatu credit card to spirit his then lover, now wife, off on romantic World Cup-watching getaways in Germany were given short shrift.
And there appears a new divisive conspiracy theory on the political landscape. Forget tribalism, forget the rather simplistic Xhosa-Zulu divisions, call it the 500k-KZN-konnection: Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge owes the government R500 000; Blade Nzimande and Willie Madisha are wrangling over bin bags stuffed with R500 000; Msholozi’s been hunted over an alleged R500 000 bribe; and they’re all from KwaZulu-Natal. Nefarious indeed. Tenuous, too.
Of course, the man of the moment is alleged to have tallied up thousands in melted plastic, but he’s from the Northern Cape, you see.
Pity the labour leader didn’t use his speech to address a glaring affront to the struggling workers labouring for a pittance in the mines, hospitals and factories of this country.
The place was teeming with a coterie of nubiles, the asinine blonde included, in slinky tight outfits more revealing than dental floss: ”We’re here because the BEE types like being served by young white girls,” divulged a particularly buxom wench whose breasts were threatening to break out into their own tripartite alliance and whose sartorial scarcity was due to her being ”two months pregnant so I have to wear the shortest, sexiest outfit I have because soon I won’t be able to”.
Although ”serving” might be a bit hyperbolic if all one does is sit around whining and complaining with that sullen look so ubiquitous of the privileged classes.
This while melanin-enriched bus boys actually did the dirty work of cleaning up after everybody.
Comrade Vavi, this situation demanded your attention.
Regardless of the BEE types’ penchant for emaciated white girls whose figures might be attributed to the sort of galloping bulimia offensive to any self-respecting peasant living below the bread line, it is time to ensure transformation occurs at all levels of society. Including the air-heads.
CAUTION: This is satire