THIN-SKINNED
AND NOSY
A Media Educational in Zimbabwe
3
MATTHEW CANNON
©Matthew Cannon 2013
No element of THIN-SKINNED AND NOSY ~ A Media Educational in Zimbabwe (and out
of it): Part 3 may be altered, copied or circulated without the author's consent.
Frank Chikane's lie is exposed
Some background first: rumours had been circulating since the middle of May 2008 about a letter
that Morgan Tsvangirai had written to Cde Thabo Mbeki, explicitly describing the damage that
his partiality as mediator in the Zimbabwean (non-)crisis had caused over the years, and asking
him to give up and let somebody else have a go. The BSSP had recently printed this letter and the
Paper had run an edited version of it too; here are some lines from the latter publication:
Your lack of neutrality became increasingly evident when I arrived to the Lusaka Summit to see you
and Mr. Mugabe on television together proclaiming there is ‘no crisis’ in Zimbabwe. The fact you
made this inexplicable comment after a meeting I learned about only on television, naturally
alarmed both me and the MDC's National Executive, given what you knew.1
What Cde Mbeki knew was that Tsvangirai had been leaked documents by
...sympathisers in the Zimbabwe military establishment...
detailing plans for an aggressive campaign against MDC supporters in the wake of the elections
at the end of March.
I immediately alerted the SADC leadership including you of these developments. As you know, it is
this information that precipitated the Extraordinary SADC Summit on 12 April.
Two days before this meeting I met with Your Excellency in one of the few times we have met
face to face. (You will recall that the first time I held a private meeting [with] you in five years was
in December 2007). On 10 April I gave you copies of the documents, and briefed you fully about
the destabilising and violent plans of the Zimbabwean security forces. You expressed deep concern
and suggested you would convene a meeting between myself and Mr. Mugabe before the SADC
Summit. I travelled to South Africa and waited for a full day for this meeting that you said you
would set up. No one from your office ever contacted me.
May I respectfully mention that when you started mediating, Zimbabwe still had a functioning
economy, millions of our citizens had not fled to other countries to escape political and economic
crisis, and tens of thousands had not yet died from impoverishment and disease...
But anyone could have written that stuff. Yes, but they hadn't. The MDC had confirmed the
letter's authenticity, saying it had been sent to Cde Mbeki's office by Tsvangirai weeks earlier, so
the BSSP article was now sticking it to the Reverend Cde Frank Chikane, director-general in Cde
Mbeki's Presidency, for having stated at a press conference on Wednesday the 4th of June that
the letter was a fake.
And because he was given such a hard time by journalists at the press conference, the Rev
Cde Chicanery went into a frightfully guilty speed-wobble and nearly divulged the Zim-SA
secret – Mary Magdalene, that was close! (I'll duplicate the best parts of the BSSP article,
punctuation and all.)
Chikane retorted: ‘The letter does not exist as far as I am concerned... I must take the risk to say
the world is not innocent. When we were in the liberation movement, I used to understand that
the world is not innocent and that there are intelligence projects which get run to produce a
particular outcome...
‘The worry I have is that the media allows itself to run on a project. So an intelligence unit
would plan an intelligence project.’
Asked specifically whether the letter was the work of an intelligence operation, Chikane said:
‘I also don't want to talk about that.’
Chikane said he knew the ‘real story’ but was not prepared to speak out. ‘We want peace for
Zimbabwe. It does not matter whether we get attacked and vilified. I know the real story.
Unfortunately I can't tell you, not because I am hiding.’
Pressed to tell the ‘real story’, Chikane said: ‘I am looking forward (to telling it). I wish they
(the Zimbabwean parties) could just settle tomorrow. But even then we would not talk about
something that would discredit leaders.’2
I have a suggestion for the next person who, like apartheid-era Law and Order Minister Cde
Adriaan Vlok, wants to wash part of the Rev Cde Chicanery's anatomy as a penance: aim for his
mouth.
But the biggest news on the front page of the BSSP that day was:
IT'S CRUNCH TIME
SA consumers feel the pain hit their households
 Banks warn struggling consumers to seek help before losing their homes and cars
 Nearly 2000 properties auctioned around the country each month
 Expert predicts 18 to 24 months of ‘hell for a small businesses’
South African consumers should brace themselves for possibly the toughest time in 10 years – and
economists warn that it is likely to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Nine successive rate hikes, soaring fuel, food, electricity and water prices have taken their toll
on a broad sweep of society – from the poorest to middle-class property owners, and even small
businesses.
But not, I was thrilled to see a few pages along in the newspaper, on the businesses of the very
wealthy and those above them, because an article said that the highest ever price for a residential
property in South Africa, R110 million, had been shelled out by an anonymous London man, and
what he'd got for it was an as yet unfinished penthouse in Cape Town's tourism and shopping
Mecca, the waterfront.
The penthouse was one of three being built on a hotel by a guy who was famous in the Old
South Africa for improving a large area of the pristine Pilanesberg (in what was then the statecontrolled homeland of Bophuthatswana, which is now incorporated into three different SA
provinces) by plonking a holiday resort on it.
At this pleasure centre and tribute to despicable taste, revellers got sun-riddled, drank cane
mixed with a popular dark brown fizzy drink, gambled, which was illegal in the Real South
Africa, and watched topless dancers, golfers and music megastars who'd been paid vast amounts
of money to play for them. Some as mega but more conscientious stars turned down offers to
perform at the resort, saying that Entertainment was Not Separate, or words to that effect.
The hotel developer used to be married to the most beautiful woman in South Africa, and
also the world, if my memory hasn't let me down, so he had everything a guy could want in life,
although he was very short and so twitchy that you never saw him without worry beads slipping
through his fingers. Or is very short, because he's still going great guns in the resort and real
estate industries here, as exemplified by the fact that he's building, and has already sold, the most
expensive residence in SA.
That's Just how It is Now; one or two of them went or got bust, but most of the guys who
became rich and famous off the back of apartheid still are.
I was convinced that after the penthouse in the waterfront was finished and the unknown
London buyer had overcome his coy English reserve (he would doubtless agree to tell us his
name once he caught on to South Africans' penchant for a good, tacky flaunting of wealth – it
means you're worth something, you check?), his new acquisition would be a set for the SABC 3
programme featuring wannabe-Toffs Swilling, the one that shows politicians twirling in their
designer frocks on the red carpet at the opening of parliament.
Because this programme is presented from a different private house every week, I could
feel in my bones that its producers wouldn't rest until they'd lined up the most valuable residence
in the country for their anchorman to stride around while supplying honeyed cornball links
between items, each more crapulent than the last.
All the houses that the programme goes for look the same because all the people who think
that having their property on Slop Spilling is desirable are similarly aesthetically-deprived. And
these enormous constructions of steel, glass and beigeness – decorated with boere-baroque
ornaments-to-order and mysteriously ‘offset’ by micro-controlled gardens containing industrialstrength water features – are predictably described by their owners as ‘perfect for the family’ or,
even more popularly, as ‘cosy’.
The kids don't look so sure when their Mummies and Daddies say things like that, and I
know why: I promise you I've been in airports cosier than the accommodation celebrated by Pop
Pilling.
So why do I watch this advertorial splurge-fest? Because I sort of can't believe how
abysmal it is. But I'm never able to get through a whole episode. I have to take a break and come
back near the end, or else bottle out completely because yelling at the television is stupid.
The programme is apparently exceedingly popular in South Africa, but I frequently meet
people who find it as abhorrent as I do (and I reckon the backlash is growing – nothing could
please me more). It's so humourlessly blunt-edged, so unintentionally-80s, so D-grade-desperadochanteuse-flashing-her-wedding-koek at us. Seriously, if your Big Day is on Rot Filling, you've
made it (hey David K?); there's really no higher honour, except maybe when they show you and
your partner winning the best-dressed couple award and drinking the most expensive champagne
inside the most exclusive VIP tent at the most stylish horse race of the year, and then all you can
say is that you ‘...feel so blessed, so humbled to be at this event that really, laak, captures the
vaab of the most classiest lifestyle out, and it's right here in South Africa! There's too much sad
things, you know? I think we need to be positive. Can't people see this is what living in our
stunneen, stunneen country's all about?’
Not me. I see more black holes in yet another local's inner space.
The programme's producers (one of whom was also the most beautiful woman in South
Africa, though not the world – she lacked the talent for that) profess that it showcases what SA
has to offer and provides goals for viewers to ‘aspire’ to. These producers are too busy Making a
Killing to consider what the unqualified, glam-fatuous Parade of Wealth they put on might
actually be doing to the viewers out there; they don't realise that it's a direct extension of the
Parade of Wealth that the violently non-egalitarian apartheid society put on every day of its
existence.
In the early hours after the Sunday on which I'd traduced Trollop Bling at length in my
mind again because I'd started thinking about it while reading the article about the building and
selling of the most expensive residence in South African history despite it being ‘crunch time’
economically, I found an episode on a satellite SABC channel. There it was, televising those
aspirational brands to the rest of the continent – extra reach, extra revenue.
I hadn't watched this insert before, for which the producers had come up with the following
concept: the programme's giggliest, bubbliest female presenter would have lunch, separately,
with a selection of SA's ‘hot’ young male music ‘stars’. (Artists of all kinds always jump at the
chance to be on the show, although they claim they hated it if you ask them about it afterwards,
as I have. It's unheard of to turn down marketing sluttery here now; ‘I'm not interested in doing
any degrading promotional shit,’ isn't a thought that's often actuated in the Nouveau South
Africa.)
Giggly-Bubbly was talking to the most successful dance music producer currently at work
in the country, who was, nevertheless, lucky to get the invitation – I mean what would HM
viewers have to aspire to if almost all of the featured guests weren't LMs? After their studiobound chit-chat, interviewer and interviewee repaired to the Walter Sisulu National Gardens for
more of their revealing heart to heart, and a picnic. What's that? Walter Sisulu? Ag, some old
Struggle guy, yadda-yadda...
Giggly-Bubbly asked: ‘Did you always want to be a musician or did you have other
aspiring careers?’3
‘True musicians are born, not made, you know?’ said the dance music producer. ‘So yes, I
was born to do music, but growing up, as a kid, I wanted to be white 'cos I just thought white kids
have it all you know, you know, all the nice toys, blah blah blah, but then of course you grow up
and you mature up and... I wanted to be a doctor – I was always about money, you know?’
The insert's voiceover artist, one of a fleet of English DJs who did very nicely at the radio
stations that furnished Happy LM South Africans with the soundtrack to the worst years of
apartheid, and who today keep themselves in the manner to which they became accustomed by
trowelling on this programme's script, then oozed with a laughy twinkle, ‘He seemed to have a
taste for pastries as well,’ as the camera closed in on a batch of creamy confections that the music
producer and Giggly-Bubbly were about to goosh into their traps.
Oh fuck off, smarmy anchorman-dude – where's the bloody remote? – and you can keep
God's blessings to yourself there, poppet. You need them far more than I do.
Wealthy Zimbabweans were now being forced to miss their favourite South African TV
programmes like Top Banana because satellite dishes were being pulled down on the instructions
of the regime, apart from those that didn't have to be pulled down, also on the instructions of the
regime. Morgan Tsvangirai and his officials were regularly being detained at roadblocks as they
attempted to campaign for the run-off, meanwhile Arthur Mutambara had been arrested for
broadcasting scandalous truths about Cde Robert Mugabe in writing, as had several foreign
diplomats based at embassies in the country, who'd been overly keen to explore reports of antiMDC violence.
Speaking to the Paper (which, hot on the heels of its torched truck full of stock, was having
to contend with weekly levies of hundreds of thousands of rands before its two publications were
allowed to enter Zim from SA), Tsvangirai said:
‘...We have seen over 60 people dead, over 25 000 internally displaced, over 1500 to 2000 people
needing hospitalization because of the brutalization they have received at the hands of Zanu (PF).
Now, this is total chaos...’4
Cde Simba Makroni's former backer, Cde Dumiso Dabengwa, was behind Tsvangirai by this
stage, which had upped his challenge to the reigning Perennial Turncoat World Champion, I had
to grant. But Cde Makroni was being resolutely non-partisan, a position he gamely presented at a
press conference in Joburg.
‘We are convinced that the last thing our country and its people need is another election,’ he said.
‘We therefore implore all national leaders, especially Mugabe and Tsvangirai, to agree to put the
people first... We specifically implore them to agree to work together... to construct a transitional
dispensation.’5
The press conference generally coincided with another instance of SA keeping Zim off the UN
Security Council's official political agenda, and, to borrow further from the NND's report about
Cde Makroni's Joburg cameo, came at a time when Cde Thabo Mbeki was
...believed to be involved in a last-ditch attempt to get... Zanu (PF) and the Movement for
Democratic Change to form a government of national unity.
[But] Makoni's proposal was rejected by the MDC and Zanu (PF).
Tendai Biti, secretary-general of the MDC, said a unity government should not ‘betray’ the
will of the electorate.
‘However, we as the MDC accept that the new Zimbabwe must adopt a fresh programme
based on a win-win mentality... based on involvement of all players and actors who see change and
democracy as the core foundation of a new Zimbabwe,’ Biti said.
Tsvangirai was more emphatic: ‘Speculation is rife on this issue, with some saying negotiations
are taking place. Others say the agreement has already been signed. Nothing can be further from
the truth.’
He said that because the run-off date was official, the vote could not be called off unless
Mugabe conceded defeat. ‘It therefore means that a government of national unity negotiated before
the run-off does not arise,’ he said.
In other words, we are having Talks about it but we don't like the terms.
The same day that that article was printed, the prime time news on the Brassy Channel
(which had also been operating a 24-hour news channel on satellite since the beginning of the
month: just what the world, and this household, needed) included a clip of Cde Mbeki during his
last budget speech to parliament. Because he was referring to Zimbabwe, I made myself
concentrate properly as he said in a near-monotone: ‘We are at one with SADC and most of the
international community that the incidents of violence and reported disruption of electoral
activities of some of the parties are a cause for serious, serious concern and should be addressed
with all urgency.’6
Hold up, what about that ‘some of the parties’? How many parties are linked to the run-off
in Zim? Two. How many does ‘some of the parties’ imply? More than one. See, this guy never
chooses his words arbitrarily.
You think I'm cynical? Hou jou M(bek)i! He wrote the book on cynicism.
Numerous organisations and members of the public had reacted uproariously to Environmental
Affairs and Tourism Minister Cde Marthinus van Schalkwyk's announcement in February about
the possible recommencement of elephant culling in South Africa, but then a silence had
followed, in which the best-intentioned discussions were carrying on out of the news media's
range, I'd hoped.
The CED picked up on a piece in a Garden Route paper in June about elephants that
everybody wanted to see more, not fewer, of now that there was only one left (maybe; the experts
couldn't agree) – (probably) the one that had been regarding me warily through the foliage from
the photo near the top of my No Spare Room totem pole/Tree of Life.
Particular pachyderm trashes tractor
was the title of the CED's article, and the SA National Parks official it quoted, who was in the
camp that believed this was the very last Knysna Forest elephant, appeared to know the animal's
preferred rambling routes.
[The official] said the elephant often walks along the foothills where the fynbos grows. ‘He moves a
lot. He crosses the Knysna River in Buffelsnek and can go from Karatara to Gouna (25km)
overnight,’ he told [the Garden Route paper].
The elephant had inspired newsprint by destroying
...a brand new tractor in the Karatara Forest near the town.
The wild elephant... came across the blue tractor parked on a forest road he apparently
wanted to cross.
The official said the elephant
...was well known for trashing man-made objects in his habitat, and did not seem to like objects
smelling of diesel.
‘He has punctured diesel drums and he's even punctured the tyre of a 3-metre-high machine –
or maybe it's fun to puncture tyres. Elephants are playful beings, so who knows the reason?’7
______________________________________________________________________________
1) The Zimbabwean 5-11 June 2008
2) Sunday Times 8 June 2008
3) Top Billing on SABC Africa, DStv, 9 June 2008
4) The Zimbabwean 12-18 June 2008
5) The Times 11 June 2008
6) 7pm News on e.tv, 11 June 2008
7) Cape Times 11 June 2008