My Oh my! (I'm not any longer allowed to say damn, bugger or anything like that. I was taken heavily to task by a puritanical female reader. So in future I shall have to stick with larny phrases like 'alimentary', 'execrable', and the like).
But - to the point of this post. South African Environmental and Tourism Minister, Marthinus van Schalkwyk a.k.a. 'Kortbroek', (he who sold his soul and the New National Party of which he was - real misnomer - 'Leader', to the ANC), would probably have been shot by his compatriots in the Anglo-Boer War. Declared a 'hensopper' (literally one who surrenders to the enemy with hands up in the air). Turncoat, quisling, toady, other terms might apply equally well in the minds of his betrayed constituents.
Having to suckle daily at the bosom of ANC ideology, I can just imagine how his pseudo-emotional intelligence and behavioural versatility have been stretched. Having to be pleasant to and accept instructions from, people that you once implied you detested, must really take some doing.
But hey, little gets in the way of rabid ambition, for the likes of our Kortbroek. In case you didn't know, the moniker fits with his schoolboy naivete and his freshly scrubbed visage. And perhaps too, his eagerness to obey the teacher. So, having sold his party and electorate down the river in exchange for a Cabinet position, he proceeded to implement (or was told to) some quite sensible environmental legislation.
But click on the article from today's Sunday Times and see if there is indeed a message between the lines. Marthinus van Schalkwyk (pictured alongside) is all too ready to sell his soul for a mess of pottage. Of course, in the face of big business, plensch money, political patronage and the peddling of influence, who could expect the environment, morality or our Kortbroek to stand in the way?
This article didn't get banner headlines. But it reflects an insidious, almost daily, erosion of civilised, democratic consultative processes. I think Robert Mugabe's secretly authored a manual entitled Dictatorship by Stealth - and it's become required reading for the few ANC members who don't sleep their way through Parliament.
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