Triiiiiiiiiing!!
The school bell announcing the start of detention has a mournful ring to it.
The bespectacled and neatly coiffured man who has been studying an isiZulu dictionary jumps at the noise, blinks twice and turns to his neighbour: a guy sporting a Soviet-era peaked hat and red socks.
“So, what are you in for?” Jean-Bertrand Aristide asks brightly, his English tinged with a Haitian accent.
Mengistu Haile Mariam barely looks up from sharpening his blood-speckled cleaver on the metal legs of his desk. He knows Aristide’s type: damn intellectuals. He was right to kill as many of them as possible while he still could. Ah, the glory days of Ethiopia! Screw the capitalists with their lies about one million starving to death in so-called famines.
He runs his finger along the edge of his cleaver. It looks pretty sharp. He stands, pushes past Aristide and strides over to the desk in the front row. Bam! Marc Ravalomanana winces as the cleaver slices into the book he was reading. Voting and gloating: A guide for the businessman president. The former Madagascan president glares at Mengistu. “Is this what the Butcher of Addis has been reduced to?” he snaps. “How sad. No wonder you led your people to ruin.”
Mengistu sneers at him. “And you think you did so well? Mr Self-Made Tycoon couldn’t even lead his country out of poverty and gets deposed by a DJ. It took the fall of the Soviet Union to get rid of me!”
Ravalomanana jumps to his feet. “That’s it! You murdering, Marxist has-been, I’ll show you …”
“Bring it! But make sure you don’t get your Italian suit dirty, you scum …”
“SILENCE!”
The two men spin around. Mengistu squints. He’s getting on in years, despite the luxury treatment he gets in Zimbabwe. “Is that …”
“Oh my God!” whispers Ravalomanana, at which Aristide winces. And crosses himself.
They knew he was coming. Naturally there was the bluster from his son about how he was still in Tripoli. Sure he was. They’d all tried those tricks in their time. But the paperwork had been signed and everyone was already taking bets whether the school principal would allow a Bedouin tent on the soccer field. It’s just that they thought he would be with the …
“Arab spring kids?” Muammar Gaddafi asks, casually perching himself on a desk and popping a date into his mouth. A female bodyguard fans him with a palm leaf.
The men look up sharply as yelps emanate from the room next door. That’s where they keep the new kids: Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. What’s Gaddafi doing here with them? Men who had earned their deposed presidential status, and other governments’ money, over time?
“Oh please!” said Gaddafi, flicking a speck of dirt off the embroidered face of South African President Jacob Zuma, one of many on his kaftan. “You didn’t think I was going to trust myself to the Arabs did you? Getting wheeled into a court in a cage? No thank you.”
He props his legs up on Aristide’s desk, cutting off the Haitian just before he started what was inevitably going to be a long-winded lecture.
“I know you three got the presidential treatment in Southern Africa. Spending money, hotel stays, security … VIP welcomes. You didn’t think I was going to let you keep it all to yourself, did you?”
Aristide nervously clears his throat. “I think you’ll find, my dear sir, that these are privileges we have worked for. For instance, everyone knows how much value my wife and I brought to Unisa …
“Shut up Jean-Bertrand!” The others chorus in unison.
Mengistu thinks for a moment and looks at Ravalomanana. They glance at Aristide, who struggles briefly and then nods.
“OK fine,” says Mengistu, lowering his cleaver. It’s made of plastic, after all. “You can stay. But Ravalomanana gets first dibs on rides in the presidential jet and Robert Mugabe is my BFF and Thabo Mbeki is Aristide’s, so don’t try any funny business there. You got that?”
The bell sounds. Detention is over.
“Sure thing, fellows,” says Gaddafi, leaping to his feet and straightening his fez. “Now who wants to join me for lunch? I know a little place called the Michelangelo in Sandton. Let’s just say … it’s like home.”
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