OUT TO LUNCH

I was a puny kid at school. When the time came to be sent off to boarding school in Sussex I had no idea what was in store for me. My preparatory school (the school we went to in the UK before we took a common entrance exam to see if we were bright enough for further private education) in Banstead had been an all boys day school and as we were all aged 13 or under bullying hadn’t been a major consideration.

Of far greater concern was avoiding the paedophile music master who after many years of child abuse was finally arrested and committed suicide the week before his trial was due to begin. He used to encourage ‘sleep-ins’ for his favourite choristers at his grubby flat and, amazingly, parents saw nothing wrong in letting their young pre-pubescent sons spend a night with an unmarried choirmaster and church organist. But we were all so innocent back then.

The ‘queermaster’ as some of us with a more cynical eye on the world, even in those tender years, dubbed him managed to persuade the headmaster of our school to allow the boys to swim naked because it would help shed their inhibitions and prepare them for future life. So swimming lessons became a pool full of naked young boys with a schoolmaster (who had also stripped naked in solidarity) standing at the side of the pool watching them with tumescent delight.

The headmaster, although married, was a tall, pale rather cadaverous figure always in a double breasted pin striped suit with the unfortunate surname of ‘Skinner’. He took great delight in mass canings in his study while our parents waited for an extra forty five minutes outside the school gates to collect us from school. I can’t remember what I did to qualify for ‘six of the best’ but I think it may have been something to do with making farting noises during French lessons. We live and we learn and I have never made a farting noise during a French lesson to this day.

When I finally went to boarding school I discovered real bullying. The progression through the school was from the lower 4th form to the upper sixth so the spread of pupil age was from the new kids at thirteen right up to those who are about to leave at eighteen.

That five year age gap brings on all sorts of hormonal changes and the net result was that the sixteen year olds were always available to bully the thirteen and fourteen year olds. Since ‘wokeness’ hadn’t been discovered back then we had to cope with it as best we could and, as a puny kid, I found the best defence was verbal.

Usually a reference to the pustules on an acne covered bully’s face which even made his best friends laugh. Thus a quick tongue saved a puny kid from misery and it has been much the same ever since.

I mention this fascinating insight into my damaged youth by way of comparison to President Ramaphosa’s visit to mother Russia last week for the 16th BRICS summit. The President has been criticised by the DA and others for saying that South Africa sees Russia as a: “valued ally, as a valued friend who supported us right from the beginning, from the days of our struggle against apartheid”.

This sort of thing apparently sends all the wrong signals to our other allies in the West but I’m not sure that is of much concern to them since most are either coping with a malfunctioning democracy or, in the case of the USA, are about to.

But let’s be realistic about the President’s comments and realise that when you are in Russia it’s not a great idea to say bad things about your hosts.

So if Cyril had given a sort of qualified thumbs up but said that Russia’s actions in Ukraine left much to be desired he might have found himself unable to leave Russia having been put on a flight to Siberia. And even if things weren’t that dire there’s always the Novichok on the door handles of the Presidential BMW to worry about.

However, the ANC’s close relationship with Russia is strong and that’s partly because of the incredible medical care that has been forthcoming whenever one of our beloved leaders has been poisoned by one of his wives. If ever NHI becomes a reality the party elite, in true communist fashion, will need access to the best medical care available to save them the bother of queueing with the sickly hoi-polloi.

But the real reason I suspect for our obsequious grovelling to the greatness of Russia is that South Africa is the puny kid in the class that I once was. If you can’t stand up for yourself then it’s a pretty good strategy to align yourself with the school bully and that’s precisely what Cyril has done.

The expanded BRICS club, or the ‘BRICS family’ as Cyril prefers to call it, has some pretty unsavoury members. I can’t imagine for example that Iran’s policy on gender based violence has much in common with ours or that Gay Pride Day in the United Arab Emirates is much of a queer tourist attraction. And human rights infringements don’t seem to be much of an obstacle to our friendship when it comes to dealing with either China or Russia.

But why should they be? As our government selectively reminds us, these are issues of sovereignty and if a BRICS member wants to bury a female rape victim up to her waist and stone her to death under Sharia law for adultery then it’s absolutely nothing to do with us is it? Live and let die.

As one of the weakest links, both morally and economically, in BRICS we must either put up or shut up and shutting up works well for us. After all, we are going to need some heavy financial bailouts pretty soon as South Africa slips further towards failed nation status and I can’t see the US or the UK being in a position to further open their wallets.

For heaven's sake, talk of reparations for slavery from Commonwealth countries has already spooked them so I suspect the subject of further foreign aid for what used to be euphemistically called ‘developing nations’ is no longer a consideration.

Which means that we need to take the begging bowl to new donors and if the big boys in BRICS are happy to help out then we must be prepared to adjust our morality accordingly. After all, how many Uighurs are there in South Africa and what business of ours is it if they are being generously re-educated at the Chinese tax-payers expense? And if Russia needs a troop boost from North Korea for the war against Ukraine what does it have to do with us? Isn’t it better to keep on the right side of people with a large arsenal of dangerous weapons?

Fortunately the culture of corruption and dishonesty within the ANC makes it so much easier to justify hanging out with less than salubrious world leaders. But it’s the promise of rich rewards down the line that make it so much easier for politicians to forget that they were democratically elected (those that were) to serve the people.

Since a large number of BRICS members wouldn’t know a democratic election if it bit them on the backside I think we can safely assume that democracy in South Africa will be but a happy memory before too long. That’s what valued allies are for after all.

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Sir Keir Starmer hasn’t exactly blazed a trail in his first hundred days as UK prime minister. His popularity rating fell to a record low in early October and his latest pre-budget gaffe is an inability to define what a working person is.

Having promised not to raise taxes on ‘working people’ in this week’s budget, Starmer finds himself unable to define what a working person actually is. This should come as no great surprise because he has, in the past, not been terribly sure how to define a woman.

He has mumbled on about people who own shares and property and doesn’t appear to include them as working people, notwithstanding they may well have prudently invested some of their earnings on shares and property over their working lives.

All very socialist stuff of course and a pretty good indicator that there will be a lot of very unhappy people after this week’s budget.

Starmer also doesn’t make clear whether a man who has his spectacles and clothes paid for by a generous party donor can really be classed as a working person. My bet is that ‘Free Gear Keir’ won’t see out his five year term as PM.