JOHANNESBURG - About 10 years ago, the powers that were (and mostly still are) at Independent Newspapers decided to transfer me from being managing editor of The Sunday Independent to being ME of something called the Independent News Network (INN), and to put the deputy editor of INN into my slot.
In other words, we would be swopped. This event was (and is) of no significance whatsoever, other than that this very likable fellow called Ronald Suresh Roberts - you know, the chap who wrote a book about the former president - this Roberts, who did not like me because, well, I am not very likable, decided that my lateral arabesque was a demotion and that he ought to point this out to me in no uncertain manner.
He therefore sent me what was supposed to be a mocking and vengeful e-mail. The aim of this was to pierce me to the quick and to push my bedraggled and vulnerable soul over the edge into a veritable slough of despond.
As it turned out, the move sideways to INN was one of the best things that ever happened to me journalistically-speaking, because it freed me to go on the Zuma trail, which ended in turn in that magnificent JZ biography that everyone (except Paul Trewhela and Mandy what's-her-name at the M&G) loves so much. My book is not, I concede, as much of a comic masterpiece as RSR's book about Mbeki, but I verily believe it has sold more copies; and we all know what Rabbi Samuel Johnson said: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money".
Anyway, all this having been the case, when I saw this week that Suresh was having a spot of bother with the Sunday Times (see here), when I saw those horrible, illiberal, untransformed people were trying to leave him with not so much as the proverbial pot in which to micturate and not a stool upon which to squat (and, sic transit gloria mundi, he was once the holder of, so to speak, a full chair in the local writing room - or at least the local coffee shop!) - it did cross my mind to write something nasty.
"Don't you even bloody well think about it," said SW(a)MBO, she-who-must-be-obeyed, aka my gorgeous wife.
"It's a kak situation to be in - having the bailiffs grabbing at your last pairs of underpants and what-have-you - and you of all people know it's a lousy situation. Remember when the Californian tax people came after you in SF. So just keep quiet, okay."
"But," I said in a wheedling tone as I cowered in a corner of the kitchen, "if the situation were reversed, Suresh would be rubbing it in ad nauseam and ad infinitum. [Sometimes I talk Latin to my wife and she speaks to me in tongues.] He'd be doing the verbal equivalent of sticking a needle up my urethra, if you follow my drift."
"Maybe," she responded. "But you need to show" - this was her Parthian shot - "that you're a bigger man than he."
Since I had been given to understand by certain mutual female acquaintances that, in the case of RSR, this would be easy to demonstrate, I decided to listen to my wife and to leave the last word on the matter to a learned colleague of mine.
When I had SMSed him that I thought we ought to start a little collection for RSR, he assumed (for reasons I don't understand) that I was being facetious, and replied: "Don't be mean. I think Malema has rather put Ronald into perspective. Comparatively nice."
Talking of whom (Malema, I mean) I see that he is going off on an "unsurprising" trip to see Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.
According to Wikipedia, "Chávez was born in a mud hut" and "[d]ue to the Chávez family's impoverished conditions, Chávez was sent to live with his paternal grandmother ... where he pursued hobbies such as painting, singing, and baseball while attending elementary school". Sounds as though he and Little Julie have a great deal in common - well, at least the singing.
Wikipedia says furthermore that Chávez has a flamboyant public speaking style, "notable for its abundance of colloquialisms and ribald manner".
Chávez's "Bolivarianism" is apparently based on ideas drawn from Simón Bolívar, Simón Rodríguez and Ezequiel Zamora, and influenced by the writings of Marxist historian Federico Brito Figueroa. Chávez is also well acquainted with the various traditions of Latin American socialism espoused by Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a populist and Latin American socialist, and Salvador Allende, and from a young age by the Cuban revolutionary doctrine of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
Complex, heady stuff - I hope Malema's taking Jeremy Cronin along to explain all this folderol to him.
Other indirect influences on Chávez's political "philosophy" are said to be the writings of Noam Chomsky and the teachings of Jesus. Chávez describes Jesus as "the world's first socialist", or "the world's greatest socialist".
But now wait a minute: how did those two Jewish folk get in there? Oh well, never mind the thinkers and the Yids, it seems that economically-speaking Malema and Chávez will get on famously.
For check this out (from Wikipedia): "Since 2005, Chávez has been an outspoken proponent of what he calls ‘a socialism of the 21st century' as a means to help the poor. Since 2003, the Venezuelan government has set price controls on around 400 basic foods to counter inflation, which has led to ‘sporadic food shortages'.
"Food processing companies said that regulated prices had not kept pace with inflation, so that they were producing regulated food at a loss. Chávez has also nationalized a number of major companies, including in the telephone, electric, steel, and cement industries. [There goes Eishkom, Telkom, and Iscor ...or has Iscor gone already?]
"According to Francisco Rodríguez (an economist and professor of Economics, who was the head of the Office of Economic and Financial Advisory, 2000 to 2004, during the presidency of Chávez), resources have been directed ‘away from the poor even as oil profits were surging', and there is no evidence of improvements in the literacy, poverty or social and economic welfare of the poor.
"He says that ‘inequality has actually increased during the Chávez administration'. He calls the result of Chávez's policies a ‘highly distorted economy in which the government effectively subsidises two-thirds of the costs of imports and foreign travel for the wealthy while the poor cannot find basic food items'."
I'm beginning to feel really good about this idea of Malema going to see Chávez. Actually RSR should have gone with Little Julie; one way of raising that money for the bailiffs would be to write an easy-to-understand and entertaining nationalisation manual. We're going to need one, nê?
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