“Quisling!” says my bestie.
“Darling?”
“Quisling, I said.”
“What, for heaven’s sake, are you talking about?” I expostulate. “I know what a hireling is. I know what a duckling is. I even know what a dumpling is. But of a Quisling I have not an inkling.”
“Let me tell you then.”
“Yes, do. Darkling, I listen.” I can be the effulgent creature of poesy if I choose.
“Quisling, when head of the Norwegian government, betrayed his country to the Nazi invaders.”
“No way, Norway, you say?” I cry, desperate to keep our pre-prandial drinks light. I fail.
“Yup,” says Noah. “Quisling is how this article describes Roelf Meyer, who has been made our new Ambassador to Washington.”
“Why so harsh? I think that’s unfair.”
“You judge. Here are the facts.” Noah loves facts. Me, I take them like medicine – in small doses.
“For a long time, our Roelfie was a senior member of the apartheid government – finally the Minister of Defence, actually. It was he who led the government team in the negotiations over the new Constitution. After the transition, he took up a position in the Government of National Unity, a beast that proved to be as misshapen as its namesake.”
Flanders and Swann sail into my mind. I let it sail out.
“When the GNU collapsed – an inevitability – Meyer cozied up to Bantu Holomisa, an apartheid creation whom Netflix would today call a Homelander. Together they sired the United Democratic Movement. It too proved a failure. Disunited, Undemocratic, and Motionless, it disintegrated, leaving nothing behind.
“From nothing to nothing”
“Undaunted, our Roelfie joined his old foe, the ANC. There he became that wonder of modern science: an entity rising from nothing to nothing. Not a word has been heard of him for yonks. Till now, that is, when he is all over the news.”
“None of this makes him a traitor,” I suggest. “I mean, politicians swap parties all the time. Remember: ‘Who would follow a Trollip into the Cabinet? Only a Horwood.’”
“I remember it well. A double act of outright betrayal.” Noah had been horrified by the floor-crossing of these two lefty luminaries. Very proggy in his day, he would sit glued when Helen spoke. Her words left him speechless with admiration. Being speechless is, you will appreciate, an occupational detriment in a lawyer.
In my time, I too have been a bit of a pinko. My face would redden at the very thought of Van Zyl Slabbert, a delectable slab if ever there was one. If ET had said “Take me to your leader,” I would have agreed in a flash. Panties are said to have this in common with nail polish – they both come off with alcohol. I disagree – a winning smile and a good bod nails it for me. He had both.
“Why shouldn’t politicians chop and change?” I ask. “Wage-earners do it all the time. You have to be rich to stand on principle, and most politicos are grasping wage-slaves who are grifting, grifting, grifting the night away.”
“Mmm.” Noah becomes pensive. But after a short pause, he says, “Meyer has done nothing since the nineties. He is white on the outside and, if his detractors are to be believed, lily-livered on the inside. He is an Afrikaner, which is thought to be a race too pale to be within the Pale. And he is male, which means (or at least used to mean) that he is not female. He is old – seventy-eight – and has done nothing for years. So why has he been appointed?”
“Why, indeed. Think, my bru, think!”
“Let me see. I suppose it’s because he is Ramaphosa’s patsy. They became tjommies during the negotiations, and Ramaphosa can trust him to do as he is told. I see it now.”
“More middling than piddling”
“Yes, you are saying the doormat has magically become the diplomat. This strikes me as unfair. Quisling he may be – I dunno – but I think he is more middling than piddling. But does it really matter?” I ask, matter-of-factly.
“I think it does. Under the Constitution, the public service is supposed to be independent of the ruling party. Friendship and fealty should, in theory anyway, play no part in the making of appointments in the Administration.”
“Dream on,” I say, dreamily. The night wanes as Noah waxes.
“On top of that, there is the issue of his colour. Surely this appointment transgresses the 4% quota for whites that Ramaphosa so earnestly espouses.
“But Ramaphosa will ride this one out, I imagine. He will say it is important that, in a post so sensitive, we should have an ambassador that best merits the appointment.
“Merit?! Merit?! What price Empowerment now?” I ask. Noah looks cross at being cross-questioned, but I don’t care. I am become the Perry Mason of the dining table.
“Well, at least the appointment has this to commend it. The optics are good. Ramaphosa has been attacked by the US for being a black racist. Now he gives them the perfect rebuttal. The Indians have gone, and here is your paleface.”
“That’s nice, very nice,” I say sarcastically. “But that’s also quite enough.”
Noah and I lapse into reverie. Not for long, though. I pipe up. “You know, I would have been a great trial lawyer. I made mincemeat of you in cross-examination.”
“Well, yes and no,” says my ever-evasive bestie. “But, frankly, I prefer you as a lover, even though you can be a trial.”
He pats me affectionately on the bottom, a habit of his I detest but cannot break. Is there a position in the US for him, I wonder. Given his name, perhaps Arkansas would do.
Perhaps not. That’s the Clintons’ home state. You wouldn’t want your bestie to live there. It’s all Russia-gate, Laptop-gate, wombling free.
How did we get from Quisling to wombling? Life’s strange.
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