WHERE WILL YOU BE WHEN JZ BECOMES PRESIDENT?

(I wrote this article in September 2006, but it is interesting to look back now on things as they were then.....)

I must appeal to all your readers, as ordinary Sethafricans, many of whom no doubt think that ‘circumstance’ is spelt ‘sirCUMstance’, to help us get rid of the self-servers in our government who invariably put themselves above both the law and the will of the people. While I must take off my proverbial hat to our financial moguls, who alone seem to be doing the right thing and keeping their noses clean into the bargain, I am thinking of the likes of our Ministress of Health who insists on spouting absurdities publicly (and looks like some sort of a smiling root tuber beneath an acrylic tea-cosy), her predecessor who is now Ministress of Foreign Affairs (please note most of these ladies have given themselves hyphenated names to announce their importance), our good Ms Fraser-Moleketi (hyphenated, of course) who manages to use a great many words in saying very little (bullshit baffles brains), the ridiculous antics of one Tony Yengeni who is enjoying the luxury of prison just 20 kms from myself, and the frightening (if not laughable) Jacob Zuma with his perennial rent-a-crowd and endless court appearances. Not only does he spout inanities publicly – not his fault, I suppose, because he was somewhere else when education was being dished out – but he has the nerve to invent wicked little ditties about machine guns and the lack of shame to actually get up and sing these songs in public.

Does he realise what will actually happen if he manages to make the Supreme Court go away, enters the race for State President, and finally gets elected?

I can tell you: the majority of Sethafricans will pack up and go to New Zealand, or somewhere far enough away that they will not have to witness the catastrophe that this country will rapidly become. While graft and corruption in high places is a problem at the moment, it will, under his presidency, become the norm; we shall be able to achieve nothing unless the right palm is greased with the correct amount of cash. To this end we are probably doing the right thing to keep our famous Ministress of Health because all we shall need in order to guarantee our safety after sex is a shower to wash away any little viruses we may have contracted. We will safely be able to do away with the judiciary (they will in any case have left, if they have any sense) because, with large enough crowds in the streets, we shall be able to disregard their findings with impunity.

You think that things are bad at the moment? Baby, you haven’t lived.

I can assure you of one thing: if Cde Zuma becomes the next president, my bags will be packed and I will be joining the queues at the airports (we don’t know what they will be called because they keep changing their names to remind us of various little political upheavals) for any flight, anywhere but here. His ascendancy to the presidency will herald the commencement of a new era in this country: the Age of the Comrade. Any old Tom, Dick, or Themba, will be able to seat himself in a palatial office and become a millionaire overnight, whilst the poor and dispossessed throng the streets with their begging bowls, if they haven’t died of AIDS, that is.

When P.W.Botha warned us of a future ‘too terrible to contemplate’ I think he must have meant just this; lucky man, dishonoured and forgotten in his house in Wilderness, he will probably have had the good fortune to die before his awful prediction comes true.

But seriously, before it’s too late, lets get rid of these mamparas from our halls of government; lets show the rest of the world that we are indeed a thinking and responsible people (even though we live in Africa), and, for pity’s sake, lets try to shut the stable door BEFORE the horse has bolted.

Otherwise, our future will be too terrible to contemplate.