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.