SINCE she has drawn our attention to the matter, there is some opinion here at the Mahogany Ridge that the defence minister, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, should tell us a little more of her trench warfare experiences.
What little she revealed of this chapter of her life during a brattish display in the debate on her budget vote in the National Assembly on Thursday was certainly intriguing. "At a time when some of you were conducting raids and maiming and killing women and children in the frontline states [as apartheid-era soldiers]," Mapisa-Nqakula accused opposition MPs, "I was there in the trenches . . . fighting for liberation in this country."
For a moment we forgot all about such things as the SANDF's disastrous mission to Bangui and even Guptagate, and instead wrestled with the image of a younger, perhaps leaner version of the minister in tin hat and puttees, dashing off a few lines of poetry on a pack of Woodbines before going over the top for another bayonet charge at beastly Fritz.
Trench warfare is not so fashionable these days. But back then it had something going for it. That is, apart from Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon (note: not a hairdresser). For instance, by "stalemating" opposing armies in one locale, it largely prevented the widespread destruction that came with a more mobile conflict. On the downside, that destruction was total, and sadly everyone was slaughtered.
Even so, proper soldiers do not flinch at the prospect of certain death and, having undergone training in Angola and the Soviet Union, Mapisa-Nqakula was probably once regarded as such, as were her foes in the old SADF.
Another exemplary example of military professionalism emerged this week with the release of the government's Guptagate report. Admittedly, it wasn't trench warfare, but the ordeal that the air force officer identified only as Colonel Visser was put through on April 30 at Waterkloof suggested something way beyond the call of duty.
According to the report, Visser was responsible for the reception of VIP visitors to the air force base. Ordinarily this presumably wasn't a problem. The odd head of state, ministerial delegations, that sort of thing. But an Airbus full of Gupta wedding guests? A nightmare.
First, the base's reception entrances underwent some Bollywood transformation with dancing and music at six in the morning. The Gupta people ambled about off-script, as it were, and the situation was "somewhat confused with some passengers walking [from the jet] to the lounges and others being ferried there by White Range Rovers".
Visser, meanwhile, was standing by to receive VIPs, the report said. "Two red carpets were laid out at the entrances to the lounges. No VIPs were identified. He ended up greeting everybody who greeted him."
It seemed, under the circumstances, an especially poignant, if farcical course of action. "For some reason," one of the Ridge regulars noted, "this reminds me of Peter Sellers." And yes, one could easily imagine it as a scene from one of the Pink Panther movies, one involving a solemn yet inept Inspector Clouseau and some visiting pasha's enormous entourage of catamites and eunuchs.
The hapless Visser does however serve as an ideal metaphor for the ineffectual manner with which President Jacob Zuma and chums have responded to the scandal: close ranks, deny everything, grin in an inane manner. It'll pass, maybe.
Interestingly, some newspapers have reported that in calling for "vigilance" regarding name-droppers and warning that there were those who "abused" his name, the president has finally broken his silence on the scandal. "Zuma finds his voice at long last," ran one headline. And that may well be the case, but he's still not telling us much about his relationship with the Guptas.
Gwede Mantashe, the ANC secretary general, has declared there was no need to; the president's friends were no business of the party's. Although many in the ANC agreed with that assessment, a significant number did not. Pallo Jordan, writing in Business Day, argued that a head of state's choice of friends was certainly of relevance to the nation. "The friends a person chooses are both matters of taste and of judgment," Jordan said. "If the actions of your friends suggest a lack of respect for you and a tendency to abuse your name, we would not be remiss in questioning your own judgment."
As for Zuma's "name-droppers", there were two mentioned in the Guptagate report - state protocol chief Bruce Kolaone and the Waterkloof's Lieutenant-Colonel Christine Anderson. Both claimed they were under some direction from Zuma. It seems strange they would lie about this, and jeopardise their careers.
As Jordan has suggested, we still need a heap of answers here.
This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.
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