A comedian for a President
NOW Parliament’s number one comic laughingly dismisses his controversial Nkandla residence as “just a house”.
If so, South Africa’s taxpayers have every right to feel cheated. For R246 million, they would have expected rather more for their money. Particularly since the final figure was far beyond the original budget.
But Jacob Zuma is wrong. “Just a house” would be one of those dwellings down in the valley, made of wattle and daub or corrugated iron and scrounged wood. Painfully close to Nkandla, should he deign to lower his lofty gaze to take them in.
Or, moving up, the term could apply to a low cost house of the kind intended to replace informal houses.
The president might be interested to know that what was splurged on Nkandla could have built more than four thousand of those. Had the government chosen the “site and service” option (providing lights, water and a slab, with cost-price material for residents to build their own home) that number would be considerably higher. I will not try to estimate how many shacks could be erected with that money, but the figure must be in the hundred thousands.
Going further up the ladder, many families in the middle and higher income bracket might occasionally regard their homes as “just a house” because they’ve become too familiar with them or outgrown them.
But nowhere can the term refer to a place with a swimming pool that cost as much as an upper middle-class home (pool companies say they could have built an Olympic-size pool for half the price); a cattle kraal and chicken run; conference centre, amphitheatre, helicopter pad, underground bunker, tuckshop; and separate residences for four wives, cosseted at State expense.
Such a place is a monstrosity.
Recently, Mr Zuma seems to be resorting more and more to laughter and derision as his defence mechanisms. He chuckled when parliamentary officials broke the rules and called in the police to control Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Front. This week, he chortled at the Leader of the Opposition’s claim that he was a “broken man”.
And he sniggered at the general mispronunciation of Nkandla (though why anyone should wish to properly pronounce a word that only amounts to “just a house”, goodness knows.)
Is Jacob Zuma giggling while the ANC burns? A growing number of South Africans must be hoping so.
Extract from John Ryan’s Spy story (published on Amazon-Kindle)
EIGHTEEN
Colonel Fyfe King responded to the news of the Drill Hall break-in as if his own home had been violated. Digger O’Brien calmed him down and then asked to see his copies of the missing security reports.
Mainly they concerned thefts of explosives from mines and ammunition magazines; raids on government pay clerks; an escape by several of Leibbrandt’s Storm Troopers from an internment camp; and attacks on young men in uniform. The youth wing of the Ossewa-Brandwag appeared to be behind most of these incidents.
Attempts had been made to destroy two lines of rail in Natal and across the Transkei border in the Ciskei. These were the only items that might have reflected on local events.
‘So what do you think, Digger?’ Fyfe King asked.
‘I don’t know what to think, sir,’ said O’Brien. ‘Without a doubt, we have some sort of spy network operating in our territory. We have to believe there are at least two of them now, one working the coast and another right here. And that person was well enough informed to know where we keep our confidential documents.
‘I’ve alerted the Royal Navy to the U-boat sightings we’ve had.’
‘Oh,’ said the colonel, ‘I’ve got some sort of documentation from the navy I haven’t had a chance to open yet. Maybe that’s in response to your report.’
He went back to his car and returned with a leather briefcase. He rummaged inside, produced a large white envelope labelled OHMS and proceeded to open it.
‘Digger!’ he said a while later. ‘It’s worse that we thought! Look at this!’
The report was short, and stark. According to the Royal Navy, the coast around Natal and the Transkei had become the main hunting ground in the Southern Hemisphere for German submarines pursuing Allied convoys.
On November 1, the French steamer Mendoza had been sunk off the Natal coast. Soon afterwards, six ships in one convoy were hit by torpedoes fifty miles south of Durban.
‘And British intelligence believes it was all the work of one sub,’ said Colonel Fyfe King. ‘What’s it called?’
‘U-160,’ said Digger O’Brien. ‘It must be the one with the flower on its conning tower.’
He read the report again, and tapped it with his finger. ‘This is what our friend was after, sir,’ he said. ‘He wanted to find out how his submarine mates were doing.’
‘What do they actually do, Digger?’ asked the colonel.‘These spies. What’s their aim?’
‘Not much more, I would think, than giving the submariners some food, maybe fresh fruit,’ said O’Brien. ‘Maybe mealie meal, sugar, meat. And fresh water. They’d need that more than anything else. So the bloke on the coast finds a safe harbour for them, they launch a dinghy and collect the stuff.’
‘How do they know where he’ll be on the coast?”
‘Oh, radio contact,’ Digger said. ‘Undoubtedly. He must have a good shortwave transmitter.’
They studied the brief report again. ‘I’m sorry, Digger,’ said Colonel Fyfe King. ‘I should have opened this earlier. But we’re all too complacent here. We don’t believe the war can be so close to us, do we?’
‘No, sir, we don’t,’ said O’Brien. He thought, well, some of us don’t.
‘You said when last we talked that you might have a suspect. Why don’t we pick him up and get Jock Brown to interrogate him? I think it’s time for a bit of third degree!’
Digger told him about the previous night’s meeting between Nick Mostert and John Moore.
‘So Moore thinks he’s genuine?’ said the colonel. ‘That’s not necessarily true, of course. He could have been well trained, well primed. They are, you know.’
‘All we can do for now is watch the man, sir,’ said O’Brien. ‘I’ve told my chaps that if he leaves town, they must make sure someone with enough petrol in the tank follows him.’
The summer hurried on. Armistice Day was a solemn affair. George Trebble survived the march past, but made sure his NRV colleagues were aware of the pain he was suffering.
Christmas came and went, meagre by past standards and likely to be worse the next year.
Christmas in the Cathedral, however, was as enthralling as ever for the O’Brien boys. The hand-carved manger scene was set up as usual near the Christening font. Dean Stewart preached a sermon of peace and love.
Later on Christmas day, the O’Briens drove out to the Nambedhlana location with a cooked chicken and presents for Matilda Makewane and her children. Afterwards, Danny saw Matilda take his mother aside and talk to her seriously.
At tea that afternoon, with quasi-Christmas cake made with bread flour, Iris announced to Digger, ‘Matilda wants to come back to work.’
‘Well, that was always the arrangement,’ said Digger. ‘Once the baby was old enough.’
‘But what about Moses?’ asked Danny’s mother. ‘We can’t just tell him to go and find another job!’
‘No, Dad!’ said Danny. ‘Moses is our friend. You can’t do that to friends!’
‘And what about my homework?’ said Patrick.
His mother laughed. ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you worry about homework,’ she said. ‘But we can’t have two domestic workers, Patrick. And Matilda says she would like to move into that room.’
‘Why?’ said Digger. ‘She’s always been happy to stay at home before.’
‘It’s the baby, little Greta. She seems to be a sickly child. Chesty, Matilda says. So she’d like to have her here in town, near the hospital.’
Patrick and Danny looked downcast. ‘Where is Moses, anyway?’ their father asked. ‘Let’s get him here. I think I may have a way out of this.’
The boys rushed off to find Moses. Back on the verandah, Digger asked, ‘Moses, can you drive?’
‘No, sir,’ said Moses. ‘I’ve seen a lot of people drive, and I’ve watched how they do it. But I don’t think I could just go and drive.’
‘Do you think you could learn?’
‘Oh, yes, sir,’ Moses said. ‘I think I would be a fast learner.’
‘What’s this all about, Jim?’ Iris O’Brien asked.
Digger told them what he had in mind. One of the Bunga’s senior drivers was due to retire in two months. If Moses was able to get his driver’s licence in that time, he could apply for the job.
That wide smile moved into place, but then receded. ‘But how will I learn, sir?’ he asked.
‘On the Ford,’ said Digger. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll teach you.’
‘What about the neighbours?’ Digger asked Iris. ‘Don’t you know any who might have a room?’
His wife thought for a moment. ‘Margaret Buhl has that little cottage,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know if she’d be prepared to let it to’ – she lowered her voice – ‘you know.’
‘Let’s go and see her in the morning,’ said Digger. ‘Moses would be starting on a much lower grade of salary than Enoch Zwane, so we could find a bit of money in the budget for accommodation.’
‘How much?’ Margaret Buhl asked when Iris and Digger approached her the next day.
‘Not too much,’ said Digger. ‘About eight pounds a month.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Buhl. ‘I’ve seen Moses with your sons and he seems like a nice boy. But I enjoy my privacy. Give me a day or so to think about it.’
Instead she responded that afternoon, surprising Iris who was watering the flowers around the top lawn.
Margaret Buhl said, ‘I think it would be selfish of me not to let Moses have the cottage. Nobody else is using it.
‘And frankly,’ she added, ‘I could use the money.’ She sighed and suddenly, Iris O’Brien thought, looked several years more worn. ‘The garage is not doing well. Nobody’s getting cars serviced, never mind fixed. I struggle every month to pay Ossie McComb’s salary.
‘For more than three years now, I haven’t known where Fritz is. Or even if he’s still alive. Can you imagine that? It’s bad enough for the other wives here with husbands at the front. But at least they hear from them occasionally.
‘At first, I thought I might have something in common with those women. But it’s very different, or they think it’s very different, because I’m married to a German.’
At once, Margaret Buhl became tearful. ‘And there’s nothing I can do about it,’ she said. ‘If I could leave town, I could get out of this awful rut. But I can’t. I can’t sell the business and go.’ She sobbed as if rocked by a spasm. ‘So I’m stuck here. I’m stuck!’
Iris O’Brien took her hand. ‘Oh, my dear!’ she said. ‘I never realised. We’ve all become so self-centred. We’ve stopped thinking about other people.
‘There you are, right on our doorstep, and we’ve not been anywhere for you. We’ve been bad neighbours. I’m so very sorry.’
‘I asked her,’ Iris told Digger later, ‘if she’d thought of going to the Red Cross, to find out if they could help. If they had some way of finding out what has happened to Fritz.
‘She said she had, but I’m not sure I believe her. There was just something in her eyes. Then I told her that our family would make sure she never felt so lonely, so by herself again. She sort of withdrew then.’
‘Well, there is something I can do for her right away,’ said Digger. ‘I told you I was having the Ford and the Bunga vehicles serviced by Ginger Southwood. Instead of Ossie McComb. But what I’ll do is arrange for half the Bunga’s cars and trucks be serviced at the Buhl’s place.
‘That should help her a bit. But I’ll still get Ginger to service the Ford.’
Mugged in charge of a trolley
Saturday morning, we arrived later than usual for the supermarket rumble, sloe-eyed from having seen off one of our progeny on the cut-price dawn flight.
It was almost afternoon before the beach buggy’s cow-catcher was able to insinuate itself through the cross-traffic of shoppers in the parking area, inflicting minor wounds on the more lethargic.
My wife and I had discussed a game plan on the way. I was to grab a trolley while she hied off to get our lunch in Cold Meats, that being the area of most likely delay. Attendants in Cold Meats, we’ve found, habitually have slower responses than the others. Perhaps it’s the proximity of the fridges.
The trolley I selected seemed sound enough after a perfunctory road test, so I made for the margarine. Then to milk and eggs with a stop betwixt for chicken breasts for an aged bitch. That’s all our Charlie will eat. My wife insists she – Charlie – is allergic to red meat. I maintain the dog is just a lead- swinger with a fowl fetish.
There were only two chicken breasts left so I grabbed them both and moved on to Softwave, toilet and otherwise. Having dumped these items, and a few more wrestled from Soaps and Cleansers, I left the trolley at a previously designated point (Hardware) and made for Frozen Foods.
We don’t normally have much truck with Frozen Foods but it’s a favourite browsing area of mine. I spend minutes admiring the pretty pictures in the vegetarian section, constantly surprised at the myriad and ingenious ways marketers can dress up the lowly soya bean to appear as something else. Thus engaged, I was suddenly aware of my wife, laden with cold meats, salads, cheeses and the Sunday roast.
“Hey!” she said. ‘What’s happened to our trolley?”
I glanced at my watch. It was twelve-fifty, demanding a sprint back to Hardware. The trolley was nowhere to be seen.
“Oh, well,” said my wife. “We’ll just have to start again.”
‘But what about Charlie’s breasts?” I shouted, as I took off down the store.
The question hung unfortunately loud on the air. I could sense strange glances in its wake.
Once more into the melee, with a light shoulder charge on a battalion of women in curlers. It is my conviction that these peak-day shoppers wear curlers like scrum-caps, to protect their ears in the tight-loose and render them more streamlined to boot.
No familiar trolley in Cereals and Coffee, so I decided to work backwards from the check-out counters. Nothing in the queues, Jams and Jellies, Bread and Pastries. But on the edge of a ruck that had formed around a loss leader in Vegetables, I found it: clearly identifiable by the chicken breasts and the margarine.
Since nobody seemed in attendance, and since the ruck was spreading my way, I made both the trolley and myself scarce in Condiments and Sauces. There I started offloading what plainly was not ours – a 10kg bag of potatoes, five packets of salt-and-vinegar chips, enough bully-beef to outlast a siege and a number of articles of a distinctly feminine nature.
I began to feel somewhat like a voyeur, not having considered before how personal supermarket carts can be – and that thought led me to a frantic attempt to disguise the trolley with more bulk chutney than our family could consume in a year.
The next task was to find my wife. En route, I encountered a large lady in a Fair Isle cardigan, loaded down with cut-price vegetables, just as she was announcing to one of the managers that someone had stolen her bloody trolley. It was in my mind to tell her it had been our bloody trolley in the first place, but she was rather heavier and tall with indignation.
When eventually I located my wife, she had another full trolley in tow. Bar the chicken breasts, the chutney and a few other items to which she hadn’t got around, she seemed to have duplicated everything on our list. We made a quick transfer to the new trolley, left the other one and headed for the tills.
I was busy unpacking the last items when my wife said, “Hello! Where are our cold meats and salads?”
They were, of course, where we had forgotten them, somewhere in the bowels of the other trolley. I was half-way in pursuit when it came around the corner, in a company of a large figure wearing a Fair Isle cardigan and the smug look of one who has seen justice done.
I didn’t have the heart to mug the lady a second time. Nor was there any point in going back to Cold Meats. The attendants would already be gone, defrosting somewhere in the sun.
We lunched – with long teeth, to use that marvellous Afrikaans expression – on a tin of bully beef and a packet of diet crackers, both of which I had neglected to ditch the first time.
If there is anything worse than a scratch meal, it is somebody else’s scratch meal.
From John Ryan’s Time Wounds All Heels column
From John Ryan’s Spy story (available on Amazon-Kindle)
NINETEEN
For Danny and his friends, the discovery of the underground maze was such an injection of excitement into their lives that they almost forgot that the main purpose of the mission was to track Nick Mostert.
The ability to walk unseen around the town, while under it, became a compelling pre-occupation. The idea of drawing up Mostert-watching rosters went by the board. After school, and once homework was done, it would have taken physical force to keep any of the four out of the tunnels.
Forget about the Invisible Man. Here were four Invisible Boys, watching the comings and goings of the townsfolk, catching some of its prominent citizens in unguarded moments.
There was old Trevor Smale, outside his drapery shop, digging in his ear with a motion that suggested he might be winding up some mechanism within his head; then staring at the finger as though he expected something to bloom from it. Further up York Road, Steve Kalendas would emerge from his Grand Tearoom to engage in serious nasal mining when he felt sure no one was looking.
They discovered too that some people of the town had set routines, like Mrs Howlett and Mr Fuller. Yet although they met so regularly, those two embraced as if they hadn’t seen each other for months. Billy Miller said it was something called harmones, but Charles Perkins said no, that was a kind of mouth organ.
Pondo Harrington and Alf Apple also kept regular hours. They appeared to have a standing arrangement to meet black people at three every afternoon on a plot next to the police station. Pondo would appear in his shirtsleeves, look about quickly and from the folds of his blazer produce bottles of a brown liquid and money would change hands.
Yet as the four watched, and moved around the central grid of streets, they found that Nick Mostert’s life also followed a pattern. Later in the afternoon, though not every afternoon, he would park his De Soto just above the forecourt of Buhl’s Motors, cross York Road and turn the corner to the Grosvenor Hotel.
But the assignations they were watching for, the slipping of a piece of paper to the hand of some seemingly casual passer-by (in their minds, that piece of paper would contain vital radio co-ordinates or the venue for the next U-boat landing) never happened. Not the first week, nor the next.
In fact, Nick Mostert kept his head down, walked wide of everyone and acknowledged almost nobody.
George Trebble was frustrated, and had been ever since the break-in at the Drill Hall. Here he was, in a position where he might have held the Grosvenor bar regulars enthralled about the events of that night, and their implications for national security.
But Colonel Fyfe King had decided, and Digger had agreed, that no one outside the hierarchy of the NRV should be informed.
So George had been unable to tell even his friend, Gerald Wilson, of the likelihood that the Nazi spy who had been active at various areas of the coast had now moved to Umtata. Or if not he, then an accomplice.
At the same time, George had come to realise that he himself could have been responsible for that spy’s action, having told the pub at large in a loose-tongued moment that Digger had a file of confidential documents.
Nick Mostert had not returned to the Grosvenor bar for some days after his meeting with John Moore.
The first time he did, Gerald Wilson had commented, ‘It must have been good, finding out how things were going at your old base.’
George Trebble added, ‘And we hear the two of you had a fine old chat about flying, the technical aspects and so forth.’
Mostert smiled and said, ‘Well, Moore’s still a youngster, still pretty new in aerial combat. There are some things you only pick up once you’ve done a few missions. I just tried to help him out a bit.’
A week later, in the Grosvenor bar, Gerald Wilson was in his cups.
It didn’t happen often, but when Gerald consumed more whisky than usual, the combination of his bulk and drunken volubility ensured that he held the centre of everyone’s attention.
Tonight he appeared to be into a repertoire of bar room ballads. He made a hash of “Eskimo Nell” and was halfway through doing the same to “One-Eyed Riley” when he suddenly fell backwards off his stool, hit the floor with a crash that rattled the bottles on the shelves, and began to snore loudly.
George Trebble was the first to act. ‘Phone a doctor!’ he yelled at Baldy the barman. He undid Gerald’s shirt, exposing a continent of flesh, and began to apply First Aid. He looked like Jonah, trying to ride the whale.
Alf Apple knew the best place to find doctors. He sprinted around the corner to the Umtata Club. Ten minutes later, Ian Ross was on the scene, stethoscope in hand.
He ran it over the large belly, checking Gerald Wilson’s heart beat. Then he slapped him lightly on the cheeks. The snoring stopped and Wilson lifted his head.
‘I’m taking him straight to hospital,’ said Dr Ross. ‘He might have had a small stroke. Some of you can give me a hand to put him in my car.’
Winter of a pukka sahib’s discontent
DAYS, I’ve noticed before, seldom bode well when one begins them by missing a plane.
Missing, in this instance, should not imply the physical departure of aforesaid aircraft for it is there, large as life on Chennai airport’s apron, pilot most likely still gulping down his motion-sick pills. But the assistant airline manager remains adamant. Check-in time is two hours before, not dam’ twenty minutes.
We tell him: Blame the dam’ New Delhi fog. It got us here late, if eight-thirty in the morning may ever be so construed. Why, anyway, does Indian Airways insist on flying out of New Delhi at sparrow? Certainly not to escape the fog, we say. Why doesn’t it fly the night before?
Loud altercation. Then, from our side, attempts at craven pleading. If we miss this connection, we point out, we’ll be stuck in Colombo for a week. Only one weekly flight to Johannesburg from there. Second prize, two weeks in Colombo. So forth.
We adjourn to a private office, for the deputy airline manager to hear our case. He listens, eyes hooded like a judge, then announces that the argument is academic. The Chennai-Colombo flight has left, winging southwards even as we speak.
Huge anger, only some of it theatrical. But it succeeds in invoking the Airline Manager himself. He arrives, kicking rumps in his wake, bearing profuse apologies and offers for us to stay overnight at company expense. Also propaganda about Chennai being the real jewel in India’s crown. Forget the Taj Mahal, the Pink City: Inspect our modern slums, view our waterworks.
The man is well-meaning but his presentation falls apart after we mention the problems with the Colombo link. When we suggest the airline’s obligation in the matter should extend to a swift charter flight, the manager disappears. Not to be encountered again.
Back to town and the tour operators. There is a slim chance of seats on the Air India flight to Harare, thence Johannesburg, though flights are wait-listed. My own situation is less severe since I intended to be in London anyway in three days. At minimal extra cost, approximating one leg, I can fly there from Mumbai, via Kuwait, tomorrow.
Night in Mumbai, mooching around the terminal. All the decent hotels are full, suggesting a convention of snake charmers, up-market beggars.
Mumbai airport seethes with low-flying aircraft, lower-flying luggage. See London and die, see Mumbai and duck. Killing time, dodging suitcases tossed hand to hand among sundry labourers, I remember one of my own.
It is in a locker at Johannesburg airport, lodged there on my way to India a week ago. The plan was that I should return to Johannesburg on the Saturday (tomorrow), meet up with my wife and accompany her to London the next day, swopping suitcases in transit. To wit, one with all manner of winter woollies – in the airport locker – for one now in hand, containing pukka sahib cotton goods and soiled underwear.
This original arrangement was rooted less in logistics that economics. First light, I broach the Mumbai airport kiosks. A Kashmir sweater would be ideal. One size smaller and it could double as a present for my wife. Not a Kashmir sweater in the place, nor sweater or jacket of any kind. Eventually, I am forced to settle for a Mumbai T-shirt with graphic views of the harbour.
The plane for London in late. Not surprisingly, for it has come from Auckland and Sydney. It is also dry. The dam’ Aussies have drunk all the beer. And no prospect of replenishing at Kuwait; you can lose a hand for tippling in that place.
Twelve hours of agony. And the movie is last week’s, Johannesburg-Colombo. More shock-horror. The skipper announces that it’s snowing in London.
Thank goodness for British reserve. Anyone wearing shirt-sleeves over a Mumbai T-shirt in brass-monkey weather at Kennedy or La Guardia would be a public spectacle, laughed to scorn. I pass through Heathrow, Customs and all, without one comment, although I read a few thoughts. They say: Man’s been at the duty-free liquor, out of his skull, probably lost his overcoat down the loo.
Even the skinheads and soccer thugs on the Underground display only mild, but happily mute, astonishment. At Russell Square, my stop, the shops are long closed. I make my hotel a sprint ahead of terminal exposure and withdraw to room service and the television.
Next morning, Sunday, I review the situation. A search through my luggage produces a pocket mackintosh I forgot I had packed against the Indian monsoons that never eventuated. Anything better than nothing. And maybe something will be open in Leicester Square or Piccadilly.
Then suddenly the awful prospect dawns of being apprehended around Soho in a plastic raincoat, Sunday morning or not. (“But, officer, I was only looking for something to warm me up!” “I’m sure you were, sir, kindly step this way.”)
Downstairs, the bellhop informs me he knows of a clothing place that will be open at Notting Hill Gate. Much safer. Dash there, find it and – for 20 pounds – a foam topcoat that immediately transforms me into the Michelin Man.
Halfway back to Russell Square, I remember I have left the plastic raincoat on the Notting Hill Gate shop counter. Oh, well. I trust it will go to some deserving voyeur.
Extract from John Ryan’s novel, Spy story (Amazon-Kindle)
TWENTY-NINE
Hugh Thompson was tall and as stooped as a secretary bird. He looked like a caricature of the court lawyer he once had been.
Thompson had an interesting background. At a high point in his life he was considered the best attorney in Queenstown, where he grew up.
Then one morning, during a trial in which he was defending a local celebrity on an allegation of attempting to shoot his wife’s lover, Thompson walked out of his house having carefully checked the case files in his briefcase.
What he neglected to check was his own attire. Stark naked, he was apprehended by an orderly as he was about to enter the magistrate’s court.
When the same thing recurred twice in the next week, he was charged with indecent exposure. Hugh Thompson pleaded temporary dementia, though that was not a normal defence, and was cautioned. Then, less than a month later, after he was found wandering down the main street without his trousers, the same magistrate committed him to Queenstown’s Komani mental hospital and ordered that he be struck off the role.
Thompson spent two years in the asylum, was given a certificate of discharge and decided to move to Umtata. There he was able to boast that he was the only person in town who could actually prove he was sane, having a document that said so.
Although not able to practise himself, he soon found a job with the firm of Martin and De Villiers. The partners were delighted to have someone of his experience and expertise, a fully qualified lawyer at the price of a clerk.
Traders and businessmen in the area began to make use of his services on the side. Thompson did their tax returns, prepared all varieties of legal documents and counselled them on matters of civil law.
Since Hugh Thompson was Tug Wood’s legal adviser, and erudite to boot, Wood had asked him to chair the public meeting about Margaret Buhl.
The meeting that Friday had to be held in the Scout Hall, adjacent to the Rec, because the town hall was occupied, being made ready for the next morning’s activities.
Before the meeting, there was activity on the Rec too, as volunteers of the fire brigade set the kindling in place for the bonfire that would incinerate the world’s Enemy Number One the following evening. Jack Maker had made the torso of boxwood, painted black, the head of papier mache. The moustache and forelock were unmistakable. Adolf was placed in position on the top of the pyre.
There were about thirty people in the Scout Hall – with few exceptions, relatives of the Transkei’s prisoners-of-war.
Hugh Thompson stood and told the audience, ‘Margaret Buhl needs little introduction. Many of you have done business with her over the years. Some of you may have known her for a long time. Some may even consider her a friend.
‘Already I’ve heard people say: “Margaret Buhl? She’s a nice woman. Harmless. And she’s a South African. Leave her alone.”
‘But that attitude misses the point,’ Thompson added, ‘which is that the nice, friendly Mrs Buhl’s husband is working for the Nazis. And, worse, that he’s working to keep young Transkeians, our young Transkeians, captive in one of those awful camps. While his wife lives free, here among us. So, ask yourselves. Is that right? Is that justice?
‘Now, there are institutions and institutions. I know, because I’ve been in one.’ Hugh Thompson waited for the laughter that came in a smatter and then grew. ‘The internment camp that Margaret Buhl should – and, we hope, will – be sent to is a far cry from Stalag VII. Or the Komani loony bin. Because we have humane leaders in this country. They know how to treat people decently.’
The audience applauded.
‘There’s another point I wish to make,’ Thompson went on. ‘We are all aware of the espionage activity happening around the Transkei. For obvious reasons, some rumours suggest that Mrs Buhl might be involved. Who can tell if that’s true or not? Nobody yet. But we are a just nation. Unlike Nazi Germany. We have a legal system which says that a person must be regarded as innocent until proven guilty. So the last thing I wish to do is to prejudge Margaret Buhl.
‘But let me just say this. Margaret Buhl may be entirely innocent in the situation. If she is, how long can she remain so? Willingly or not, her husband is working on the side of the enemy. How long can it be before she is dragged in too? If she hasn’t been already. And if she should try to resist the approaches of the Nazi spy masters, what do you think would happen to her? Do you think for a moment they’d say, “All right, Mrs Buhl. Go back to your garage business then”?
‘The prospects for her would be too awful to contemplate. And so we say: In Margaret Buhl’s own interests, she must be removed from this scene, this place which could become extremely perilous for her!’
‘That’s exactly it!’ said Tug Wood, springing to his feet. ‘Extremely perilous for her. She must be interned! In her own interests! And in everyone else’s -’
‘You can’t do that! You must not do that!’
The cry, deep but anguished, came from the back of the hall. The audience turned and gasped.
Three years before, Jeff Hall had been a star lineout jumper for the Pirates rugby team. Now he battled merely to stay upright, leaning with one hand on the shoulder of his wife. TB had sucked the flesh from his frame. His face was like a deflated balloon, his cheekbones cast a shadow around his mouth. But his voice, though it seemed to rise through levels of pain, was clear enough.
‘You people don’t understand,’ Jeff Hall said. ‘Fritz Buhl is on our side. Fritz is the best thing that could have happened to our boys. The camp commanders don’t know he’s from here. So he gets away with murder.’
There was a pause while Hall sought breath.
‘Fritz Buhl wangled it so he’s the senior guard in charge of our huts. And he’s made life a lot easier for us. Our blokes get extra rations. He brings in cigarettes, sweets. Fritz has found sports equipment for us where there wasn’t any before.’
Jeff Hall went into a spasm of coughing and was handed a handkerchief by Susan Hall. ‘But best of all, his German bosses think he’s a real taskmaster, so they leave him alone. He pretends to send chaps to the brig, to solitary. They think that’s the reason why our huts are so disciplined, because he’s tough. And it’s a two-way arrangement. When the four of us decided to go under the fence, we did it when Fritz was on three days’ leave. Because we couldn’t put him at any risk.’
Hall turned to face the audience. ‘I know some of you have relatives in Stalag VII. If those relatives were here, they would say exactly what I am saying. Leave Margaret Buhl alone! Leave Fritz Buhl alone!
‘Anyway, the only reason you here know that Fritz Buhl is in that camp is because he wanted it to be known. He wanted his wife to know that he was safe, alive. And so he got Bob Dudley to send those messages in a code that they worked out between the two of them.’
Hall fought to control another cough. ‘If Margaret Buhl is interned, if she is put into one of those camps, the Nazis would be bound to hear about it. They would make the connection with Fritz and he would be transferred somewhere else. Worse, they might come to realise what he’s been up to, how he’s helped our chaps. Knowing the Germans, I’d say they could even kill him.’
Jeff Hall addressed Hugh Thompson and Tug Wood. ‘You mean well,’ he said. ‘You think you’re trying to do the right thing. But you’ve got it wrong. Please believe me!’
He sat down abruptly. There was a silence lasting several seconds before the meeting began to break up. Then all those present lined up to shake Hall’s hand.
‘Sorry, Jeff,’ Tug Wood told him. ‘We didn’t realise. Well, we couldn’t have done, could we? But I’m sure we all feel a lot better now. About our chaps over there. And about Fritz Buhl, and Margaret.’
The lights went out in the Scout Hall and over the small gate that was the entrance to the Recreation Ground. But the action and drama were not over for the night.
Not an hour later, three figures emerged from the shadows, silently making their way to the centre of the ground, to the great pile of firewood.
And within seconds, Adolf Hitler in effigy was ablaze, lighting the sky with the radiance of day.
Setting a minnow to catch a game fish
There we are, quayed-up so to speak, among the Hout Bay gulls. Three hundred broad-shouldered, muscle-honed specimens from the top drawer of South African deep sea angling.
And me. A minnow among leviathans.
Standing about, wiping nerve symptoms from palms, I find a public relations hand-out in the clutch of one. I read it and am startled by the small print on the last page which describes this event as “a must for anyone who has ever matched his strength and wits against the great fighters of the sea”.
Had I seen this before leaving home yesterday, I would still be there, mowing the lawn, though at 6am on a Saturday such activity might have excited the neighbours, not least before we don’t have a lawn.
I cast around for an escape route but am hemmed in on all sides by a phalanx of oil-skinned Titans, rods and foul bait to the fore, eager for the fray.
The sponsors, mine hosts, purveyors of last night’s free Italian whisky (what do you mean, Justerini isn’t Italian?) are in evidence too. One slaps another and points in my direction. The two become mirthful. Press-ganging suddenly takes on a new dimension.
So. Nothing for it but a bold face. However pale. Dread minutes pass.
When the boats arrive, all 35 of them, it is small consolation to find that ours is among the largest. Most of the rest I wouldn’t sail in my bath.
We board. I am consoled further to find at least a pair of kindred souls among our complement. They are immediately recognisable by the position they take up at the gunwales, heads well over the side. And we have yet to leave harbour.
They introduce themselves by shaking hands from a position somewhere behind their backs. One is the owner of a pizza parlour in Johannesburg, the other a wine farmer from Paarl. Nino and Theuns.
I meet the crew. Titans all, preoccupied with discussing traces and breaking strains, wind directions and, paramount, the prospect of landing the winning marlin or the tagged yellowtail worth 62 000 rands.
Our vessel moves out, motors growling like a well-trained Rottweiler. The growl says, those fighters of the deep had better watch out. For some reason, I do not feel reassured.
Up on the pulpit deck is the skipper, guiding us through the Hout Bay heads. He is a large, genial man. He is also a cigar smoker, one of which he lights as we accelerate through the first breaker.
Twenty-five grams of Marzine (my sole breakfast intake) struggle gamely on my behalf and barely win. The smoke wafts down to Nino and Theuns, who begin making goose-type noises. They both come close to abandoning ship.
The crew has set up the rods in their slots. There are seven of them, too many by four for my fancy, bristling out around the stern.
Reports start coming in on a radio from boats further out. No one is catching. How long did Hemingway’s Old Man of the Sea go without a fish? Eighty-four days? There could be hope yet.
At once, one of the lines goes with the sound of a small siren. I stumble down the gangway to watch the action. And discover, with abject horror, that I am intended to be it.
Protests are useless. The crew is insistent. Guests first and Nino and Theuns are hardly fit for that category. I am bundled into a swivel chair, harnessed up, handed the screaming rod.
To begin with, I decide big game fishing is a cinch. The angler is merely a fulcrum between a fixed point, the harness, and a moving force, the fish. All he has to do is heave and reel, heave and reel, heave and reel.
But after twenty minutes, I have the distinct feeling that the only thing still attaching arms to torso is the fabric of my windbreaker. Then the line goes limp. Reaction from the crew is as if I had dropped a vital catch in a Test match. I am slightly exonerated when they pull in the line and find the tunny has straightened the lure.
So to the cabin for liquid therapy and a stocktaking of limbs. Duty has been done, permanently, surely.
No such luck. Not an hour later, we strike a school. Five lines howl. This time we land five good-sized long-fin. The deck is awash with blood. I slip in the stuff and end up atop Nino and Theuns, by now prostrate in the bilges. We might be a scene from a Clint Eastwood movie.
For the record, our boat caught the largest fish of the day, and contest: 80 kilograms. The second day was aborted after an hour because of a gale. During that time, the biggest catch was five kilograms – about a quarter of the size of my biggest the previous day, as I shall remind by grandchildren.
There is a second national big game competition at the end of the month and another during the next. They will be at least one contestant short on each occasion.
Time Wounds All Heels column.
And a specialist space-walker from out of darkest Africa
Lusaka, Wednesday: Edward Nkoloso, Zambia’s self-styled Minister of Space Aviation, has come down to earth at last. But he insists it is only a temporary confinement. Lack of funds for his multi-million pound space project – which aims at putting a Zambian on Mars before anyone else – has forced Mr Nkoloso into a more terrestrial life. He has now been appointed the President’s special overseer at a white-washed complex in Lusaka which houses exiled nationalist organisations.
In deference to his new status, Mr Nkoloso has swopped his monkey-skin space suit for a sober purple toga. But behind the desk in his sparsely-furnished office, the spaceman retains the symbol of his realm – a crested eagle on a dinner place atop a sawn-off broomstick.
Edward Nkoloso hit the headlines two years ago when he announced that he and his student astronauts at Zambia’s Academy of Science and Philosophy were building a six-foot rocket ship at a secret site in the Chongo Valley near Lusaka.
The missile, which he described as being “of Russian and American design with an African firing system”, was intended to put a dog, Cyclops, into space within a few years.
Mr Nkoloso regretted that, for security reasons, he was unable to show international observers the rocket ship.
However, under pressure, he agreed to show them his astronauts in preparation – rolling down steep hills in barrels (to experience weightlessness), springing out of tall trees. One astronaut, who possessed the unusual talent of being able to walk long distances on his hands, was being groomed for a moon shot. For, as Mr Nkoloso pointed out, anyone with any intelligence could see that the surface of the moon must be upside down.
Later, the space programme ran into two snags. First, the United States refused an application from Mr Nkoloso for 20 million dollars in aid. No reasons were given, but the chief astronaut believed that the refusal stemmed from American fears that Zambia would get to Mars first.
Then the Zambian government – pained because foreign correspondents in Lusaka for the anniversary of Zambia’s independence seemed to making more of the academy that of the celebrations – ordered Mr Nkoloso to curb his publicity campaign.
The academy was thrust into temporary liquidation. The twelve apprentice astronauts formed themselves into a rhythm group and their leader went out to work.
Mr Nkoloso’s new job entails looking after the interests of refugees who run the exiled organisations and, as he puts it, “seeing that they keep out of trouble”.
By that he means trouble with the Zambian government, for the gun-running activities of certain of the groups have recently caused the Lusaka authorities great concern.
From One Man’s Africa.
Don’t mess with me on music!
Certain readers have taken umbrage at my contention some columns ago that a great deal of what passes for modern music is mindless garbage. And to think I thought I was putting it mildly.
“Shiny, Happy Person” of Edgemead accuses me of “sarcastic generalisations”, sweeping observations which she maintains are the result of prejudice, ignorance and a closed mind.
“Ode to Joy” of Claremont is even less flattering. He claims I know “sweet bee-all” about music of any variety or persuasion and should not have the gall to address the subject.
Well, “Ode to Joy” of Claremont, you have gone too far. And, having led with your chin, we shall see how much punishment that chin can absorb.
To start with, let me tell you that I was once a concert pianist! In fact, not once, but numerous times.
It happened in the Transkei when, as a matric pupil, I was a member of a travelling concert troupe called, somewhat obscurely, “The Ginger Nuts”. I was the nut on the keyboard for one whole season, playing classics and music hall selections.
My career might have blossomed further but prominent Umtata citizens persuaded my father to send me to university. Or anywhere, they said expansively.
At university in Durban, my thirst for musical knowledge was unquenchable. I played with a number of campus groups which all unfortunately – for one reason or another – fell into disarray. (Someone laughingly suggested I must be some sort of Jonah.) But those groups were great fun while they lasted.
Much of my spare time was spent browsing in libraries and second-hand bookshops or sitting around in sleazy bars, the sort of places where musicians of the time gathered. So a good measure of my musical education was ad hoc, as it were, although I learned the darndest things.
Are you aware, for example, “Ode to Joy” of Claremont, that Frederic Chopin never wrote all those nocturnes and polonaises for which he was given credit?
No, I thought not. They were composed, the whole lot of them, by an Irishman named Jack Clancy whom I actually met in one of those bars to which I refer.
We ran into each other a few times before Jack Clancy finally broke down and told me his story, in great confidence, one evening when he’d had a few beers. He must have been quite an old man by then, though he carried his age well.
But I don’t believe he can still be alive, which is why I feel free to relate this.
It seems Clancy encountered Chopin in a bordello in Berlin where he (Clancy) was working between concerts for the celebrated Prince Radziwill. Clancy happened to dash off on the resident baby grand a norturne (his very first) which he had written the previous evening.
Chopin was so impressed he entered into negotiations with Clancy that very night. And for 18 years Jack (as he insisted I call him) provided most of Chopin’s material. Clancy admitted he had some problems with the polonaises but was helped by the fact that his grandmother had been Polish and had imbued in him the spirit of resistance.
I said to Clancy that, had I been he, my spirit would have resisted fiercely the idea of my compositions being plagiarised for the price of a few regular vodkas (which apparently was the arrangement) but Clancy, essentially, was a humble man.
Yet a man big enough to concede that Frederic Chopin, at the end of the day, wasn’t at all a bad pianist.
Pursuit of musical knowledge has led me, over the years, down the highways (and the byways) into areas often murky. But, through my investigations, I have been able to overturn numerous popular myths.
How many people know that Wolfgang Amadeus Beethoven was not deaf at all?
It’s true. When Beethoven was a child, and was forced to do his scales and arpeggios every day, he formed such a dislike for the piano that he was driven to simulate deafness. It became a defence mechanism.
His mother would call him from the playground, where he and his mates were playing the German equivalent of cricket or touch rugby, and Wolfgang Amadeus would pretend not to hear. The louder his mother shouted, the more deaf he became.
Then a day dawned when the young Beethoven discovered he really enjoyed music – tinkling the old ivories and composing a bit on the side. By then, however, it was too late. He could not blow his cover without immense social implications, not to say deep filial problems. So he was stuck with his ear trumpet for life.
Coincidentally, a distant relative of Wolfgang Amadeus Beethoven did happen to be deaf. His name was Ludwig and, while W A Beethoven’s biographers fail to mention him, I have heard he did something in music too.
And what about that other immortal, Johann Sebastian Mozart, the babychair composer, generally adjudged to be the most precocious of them all?
After careful research, I am able to reveal another little-known fact. Which is that Mozart was born on February 29, 1756, a leap year. So he only celebrated his birthday every four years.
Thus his first attempts at composition, just after his fifth birthday, actually occurred when he was 20. And when Mozart died at the age of 35, he was indeed 140 – not a bad innings at all, all things considered.
Nor have my pursuits into the rutted field of music been confined to the classics. I could speak with authority about Fred Dillon, Malcolm Jackson, Noel Diamond, Fleetwood Mike et al.
And on another note, so to speak, how many people know that the Beatles were not actually brothers?
No, “Ode to Joy” of Claremont, my credentials to express an opinion on music of all kinds are impeccable. And if you cannot be civil, at least get your facts straight.
John Ryan’s Midweek column
Speaking at this moment in time . . .
Travelling steerage on an Airbus some days ago, I was puzzled to encounter an object with a label proclaiming it to be a “motionary discomfort receptacle”.
Puzzled I was, for a while, because the thing looked just like an airsick bag and unquestionably would have been able to serve the same purpose.
It was even in the pocket behind the seat where one expects to find airsick bags, along with the last encumbent’s toffee wrappers and the airline literature, always so graphically illustrated, that shows passengers where to store their dentures before the moment of impact and how to conduct themselves in a lifebelt once the aircraft is to the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
What has happened, of course, is that obfuscation simply has taken to the air. And, indeed, why not? What better place for jet-age jargon than in a jetliner?
Not that obfuscation is a modern phenomenon. Far from it. But it certainly has never had so many apostles.
Obfuscation, as if you didn’t know, is the art – or science, since it generally seems to be employed in scientific directions – of saying what you have to say at as great a length as possible, using the most obscure terms available. (To obfuscate means to darken the mind.)
Obfuscationists come in many categories of competence. Down around the lowest rung is the person who talks about “parameters” and refers to “this moment in time”, when he means “now”. But then, as you might imagine, it’s an exacting science or art, since a person’s natural inclination is to be as direct as possible in thought and speech.
Who is to say how much midnight oil is burnt along the corridors of science, commerce and industry as departmental scribes strive to bring the highest degree of obscurity to their memoranda and reports? Or how many person-hours went into that single instruction that came with your new lawnmower telling you how to “reverse the transit screw adjuster bolt at the rear of the baseplate co-ordinating catch before depressing the upper support stay”?
As if to confirm my belief that obfuscation has gone into the air travel business, a Government notice landed on my desk yesterday about “conditions relating to the disposal or use of aviation fuel”.
In it the author outlines various regulations that apply to “power-driven, heavier than air machines deriving their lift in flight, chiefly from aerodynamic reactions on surfaces which remain fixed under given conditions of flight”.
He means aeroplanes.
These regulations, it seems, are different from others that have to do with “heavier-than-air machines supported in flight by the reactions of the air on one or more power-driven rotors on substantially vertical axles”.
He means helicopters.
The author almost lost me with one reference to “an air transport service in connection with which flights are undertaken with such a degree of frequency that they cannot reasonable be regarded as merely casual or isolated but are undertaken between points which do not vary . . .”
Of course, he’s talking about regular flights. But how clever to put it that way?
Obfuscationists get around. There is at least one in our company, witness a memo that reached me recently about a sister newspaper with “approximately four per cent more manpower than was estimated as being adequate”.
This state of affairs, the memo concluded, was “mainly due to the under-utilisation of the Leave provision”. Or, to put it another way, because some people weren’t taking their holidays.
Another example of obfuscation at its best comes from a brochure seeking applicants for the Boston Consulting Group, wherever that might be. It says: “Financial compensation for successful performance . . . is certainly likely to be sufficient to remove it as a constraint upon any reasonable standard of living.”
Which means the pay’s okay if you’re good enough
Or how about this, from a house magazine, advertising an in-company health scheme? The ad says, “The only applicants likely to be refused entry are those with multiple pre-existing medical episodes.“
Or people who get ill a lot.
Curiously, one of the great crusaders against obfuscation is the Old Thunderer, The Times of London. The newspaper frequently runs angry letters in its readers’ columns about obfuscation – like one this month from a professor at Queen’s College, Oxford.
“Sir,” it read, “would someone please inform our politicians and political writers that ‘parameter’ does not mean ‘rule’ or ‘convention’ or ‘limit’?
“Yesterday, parameters were being observed. No doubt we shall soon be having them loosened up, thinned out and boiled down.”
Excellent advice, I’m sure, if you happen to have any dealings with parameters. Personally, I wouldn’t presume to touch them with a barge-pole.
If, that is, they are capable of not being touched with a barge-pole.
John Ryan’s Time Wounds All Heals column
John Ryan 