On April 27 2021 Napoleon Machete* will cast the presidency aside, to take up a position more befitting his status. His official title as of next week will be ‘Machete the First, His Royal Highness, Caesar of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia and the Indian Ocean'.. Napoleon started his political career as general secretary of the ‘Union for the Advancement of Young People'.
Yesterday he gave the Macheteville Herald an exclusive and candid interview. We started with his relationship with former president Jacob Zuma.
Interviewer: Eventually Zuma got tired of you?
Machete: Don't be naïve (laughing). I was his protégé. But sometimes when I overdid it he had to say something. Just for the record. No one ever took it seriously. Only once was he really mad.
Interviewer: When
Machete: When I suggested shooting one minister's knee caps every Monday, until the government nationalized Sandton ... That had him worried ... No, not because of the ministers' knees, but because 50 % of his women and all his cronies were living in Sandton ... I had to retract it ... Three years later I made him security chief of ‘Machete Museum' on Robben island...
Interviewer: Were you ever offended by the things your opponents called you in 2010?
Machete: ‘Scoundrel ... punk ... thug' (laughs). Some of the names I invented for myself. Whatever makes you known helps. It was one of my best years
Interviewer: Not many politicians would call 2010 their‘ best year'.
Machete: One has to understand the rules of politics. Take lies, for example. Everyone condemns them. But lies are essential for a young politician. There there are not, and there will never be bad lies. There are only badly managed lies. Others were quite good at it too, but I made it into an art.
Interviewer: You were constantly on the attack
Machete: The secret of my success was attack. The DA said of me, that ‘the last resort of the scoundrel is attack'. In 2014 I outlawed them.
Interviewer: Was Mugabe your idol?
Machete: I never idolized any politician. I just used them. Mugabe taught me the three ‘isms'. When we attacked we always used one of them: colonialism, imperialism, racism - what a beautiful trio!
Interviewer: Did you ever use all three at the same time?
Machete: Often. The best ever was calling COPE a ‘racially motivated, imperialistically driven, colonial party reminiscent of the darkest days of apartheid'.
Interviewer: Why did you insist on being covered by the media all the time?
Machete: For a politician, silence is the biggest enemy. They - Gordhan was the worst - refused to let us grow ... They had money, people, mining companies. What did we have? My mouth and the vuvusela noise it made.
Interviewer: I read that at one time the ‘union' had more members than the ANC.
Machete: Only after I was elected (laughing). Before I came to power there were fewer, much fewer. In 2006 it was only me. In 2008 we had three members. In 2010 - our best year - we grew to fourteen; five of them were my cousins.
Interviewer: So who made all the noise?
Machete: The hired experts. We had 27 media consultants ... Obama had less when he ran for president. They wrote the texts and I gave the speeches. Most of them were whites. I was always amazed what they were willing to do for a fee, these whities.
Interviewer: What was your most successful moment in 2010?
Machete: The lynching, I mean the launching of two campaigns. First we called Zille ‘an imperialistic worn out go-go girl'. One week later I demanded that SADC countries declare the Dalai Lama ‘a syphilitic one-eyed dog financed by Wall Street'.
Interviewer: Did you have any international support, other than from Mugabe.
Machete: Ahmanijad. He told me ‘easy catchee monkey. These politicians may surprise you'. ‘A politician is an arse upon which everybody has sat, except a man', was my legendary response. Kids still learn it for matric.
Interviewer: Were you ever attacked yourself in 2010?
Machete: Yes. Trevor leaked photocopies of the shares. It turned out that my illiterate grandfather, who passed away in 1950, owned 20% of Nedbank ... People suspected he was just a front ... Yes, the same Trevor. He is now in charge of bad debts in the Machete Museum. Maria -‘bad debts'- Ramos assists him. After all, no CEO has ever turned so many bad debts into so many good assets. Hers, I mean.
Interviewer: At one stage the top alliance politicians were all united against you.
Machete: United? Never. Since the struggle began there has never been a time when all politicians agreed. They either agreed on what was to be done, but not on the day when it should be done; or agreed on the day that it should be done, but not on what should be done. Why would they - I asked my lawyer - unite just when it came to me?
Interviewer: How would you define the politics of 2010?
Machete: I realized that democracy was not well suited for SA. In 2010 the country was still in its political infancy. In Western countries politicians set -or were supposed to set- an example to the ordinary citizen. With us it was the opposite.
Interviewer: What do you mean?
Machete: Regular citizens set an example for politicians. They were the ones who paid taxes, behaved morally, paid traffic fines, used condoms ...
Interviewer: Did politicians ever follow their example?
Machete: Only when the kak hit the fan. When they were caught red handed. When all other options had been exhausted. When the editorials screamed to high heaven. When they were sued. It was then that I realized that when politicians said ‘Proudly South African' what they meant was that they were proud.
Interviewer: What about ?
Machete: How easily they could do whatever they wanted ...
Interviewer: What was your first step when you became president?
Machete: I abolished elections, politics, politicians. It was just me and my people. The rest is history.
Interviewer: People blamed you for not being consistent.
Machete: In my book a consistent statesman is unconstitutional. But, yes, I had to change tactics, often. In 2010 they managed to twist my tongue. I was forced to abstain from any personal attacks on mine-owners. I am sure you remember it. These mine owners were ruthless, ruthless. And the private detectives they employed were even worse. Eish ... they found everything ... every contract, every municipal deal. One of my more known colleagues who was burned/burned his fingers warned me: ‘Don't mess with the Oppenheimers of this world.' I said to myself, ‘If you can learn from some one who massed with Oppenheimer and got a good lesson/took a beating/lost it, why not'? After all, he had learnt it the hard way, hadn't he?
Interviewer: In 2015 you have abolished all other religions and initiated the ‘SA National Machete Jerusalem church'. Were you always a religious man?
Machete: No. But during the lonely hard nights of 2010, before falling asleep, I repeated my own mantras. I used to say three things to myself. They kept me going
1. We did suffer under apartheid, didn't we?
- Find out what the damn ANC charter is all about.
- One day, they'll call it Napoleon square ... I'll keep the Mandela statue , though
* A fictitious person. Born in the hectic mind of an optimistic citizen.
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