Last ‘White” man standing … down

Weblog
Jozi
22 Feb 2009
On the face of it the moral argument for South Africa/Azania to give the new Unity Government of Zimbabwe/Rumbabwe a billion dollars [US] to kick start their economy is overwhelming. The South African government has stubbornly refused to hold the Zimbabwean/Rumbabwean [Z/R] tyrant Robert [Bob the Roz] Mugabe [aka The Roz], dictator of the ancient State of Rozwi now aka Z/R, accountable for the damage, destruction and huge unnecessary loss of life in that country since the Roz and his gangster cronies embarked on a petulant spoiling spree ten years ago.

“I don’t care if the cat is colour A or colour B,” the new pity-me-face of the newest begging bowl kid on the block Morgan ‘Unspellable and Forgettable’ Tsvangirai [sic] whined breezily yesterday morning on E-News, “as long as it catches mice.” A wonderfully displaced statement, under the circumstances.

He arrived in town clutching his new finance minister and not a gangster was in sight.
Buried out of sight though is a hostage to fortune. And thereby hangs a curious hiatus this past week in the strange mercurial politics of Africa… a tale of two white men in a black man’s world.

The strange admixed fortunes of a pair of odd “White man cometh” adventurers came to a sticky and gruesome end this week: well given the nature of both, more like a moment of super spin-fall-over.

The hostage to fortune in Z/R, a man Jane Austin called Mr Bennett was arrested on, allegedly, trumped up charges this week by the dictator Mugabe’s goon squad in a ‘finger in your eye’ act of political intimidation. He followed it up with one in the other eye when he appointed ministers he wasn’t supposed to… except no one told him.

The intimidatee [sic] the man called Morgan T’, was basically told [one presumes] that if he expects to see the fellow Bennett in one piece again, plus a dozen or so, more anonymous hostages, he had better get his smooth talking arse out into the limelight and hustle for some pocket money for Bob’s inevitable retirement to the north of some sunny refuge.

Since we effectively forced Morgan T to get into bed with The Roz’ it is reasonable that we pay the lobola for the marriage. In fact if it hastens Bob’s retirement so much the better.

But we must know that it won’t.

Nothing has changed in Zimbabwe. The Roz and his thugs are the political equivalent of Cancer. Giving money to the Mugabe-regime-by- any-other-name-is-the-Mugabe- regime would be like pumping hormones into the disease zone rather than excising the tumour and battering the wound with Chemo. The patient is close to dead now and is hardly likely to get better by increasing the size of the mortgage. [My apologies for the mixed metaphors].

Undoubtedly we shall see the ANC led SA government attempt to “spin” their reasons for handing over the billion bucks of taxpayer money to the really poor next door as a vain attempt to arrest the flow of citizens fleeing South. As I observed the moral argument for support is overwhelming albeit futile.

However the ANC [the ruling party in South Africa/Azania] this week lost its ‘spinmeister’. By a bizarre stroke of irony another of the few so-called “White” Afrikans who choose to involve themselves in so called “black” men’s [and seriously tough black women’s] politics saw his career come to a sticky end this week, and like Mr Bennett, he had to be cut from the party.

For years Karl Niehaus has presided, covertly and otherwise, around the fortunes of particular persons within the ruling party. His absence this week after being busted from the party after admitting fraud, publically, on radio, and then television was however, noticeable. A strident lady attempted to defend the Party’s moral and legal position regarding fraud admissions by Mr Niehaus, during an ‘after 8’ debate on SAFM last week: and her lack of plausibility was painfully evident.

Presumably the relevant lady lives in the real world when not in the studio. A Spindoctor should have a flair for metaphor and the spokeslady for the ruling Party was a literalist. She was also most enraged when some rival lady phoned in and called her “poor woman’. She was no longer poor we heard for what it had to do with the message being presented… but then as I observed Mr Niehaus has gone and the truth will manage itself. There are many who agree with the infamous observation some years ago by a well known and generally respected activist that he didn’t join the struggle to stay poor. Getting rich is definitely in and rthe new spokeslady made that obvious.

Mr Niehaus on the other hand was/is a master of sleight of hand duplicity; and as we discovered this week he also lived in La la land where you don’t have to do anything useful [apart from polishing lies] and you can live the life of your dreams. He was finally busted for so much dodgy debt that had he been a Dickensian character he would languish for years in Debtors Gaol… Now of course a month or two of penance and it will be back in the saddle for Karl … he hopes.

If Mr Niehaus’s electric fall from grace this week demonstrated anything it was that the politics of corruption undo the citizen as effectively as the politics of corruption destroyed Zimbabwe; and, lest it be thought we are being too parochial; how the politics of corruption have undone the planet: given our current almost unstoppable momentum towards the abyss of a global depression. [He also demonstrated that, like Mr Bennett languishing in jail, that when the chips come down hard the honky in our region is more expendable than many other of dubious degree who languish instead in the various ‘Politburos’ of the ruling parties.].

I put the ‘almost’ and ‘seemingly’ in those last two pre-italicised sentences because, like most of my fellow humans I like to give optimism a marginal break.

That this is a bleak break rests on an almost certain economic assumption. Tossing a billion dollars[US] into the arid production-free hell that is Z/R today would simply fuel the rampant inflation. The present trickle of goods flowing into the country would swell to a small stream and be swallowed by an ocean of demand… Inflation is as inevitable in this situation as debt is. We also have a litany of role models now to know that reconstruction will take most of this century… assuming the human race survives the century in its present form.

In fact Mr T’s ‘cat and mice’ analogy is off the mark. It is true that the size, shape or colour of the cat is irrelevant but not because they all catch mice. Rather because not even the legendary pied piper could stem the tidal wave of rodent power pouring out of every patch of shadow, bent on overwhelming the poor lonely ‘moggie’. Zimbabwe is still the same dishonest place it has been for the past 30 years: donate maybe, lend never.

Perhaps it is apposite that the farmer who would repair the farms in Z/R and the ‘spin meister’ who would make lemmings relish their journey of doom have both been abruptly removed from their tasks… free now to watch the sunset.

Cheers

The Blog’