Valentines Day?

“Why does it have to be this day?  Who chose this day?  I don’t only love you on this day. I love you every day.  Doesn’t that make every day Valentines day?”

This is what he had the nerve to say to me, and all the while doing that thing to my neck that makes me forgive all transgression.

No, every day is not Valentines Day.  In fact, with him not even Valentines Day is Valentines Day.  Where are my two dozen red roses?  Where is my sexy lingerie in a decadent box that’s wrapped in red ribbon?  Where are my diamonds?  Where is the sickeningly syrupy poem he is supposed to compose for me?  Which restaurant did he book weeks in advance anticipating the probable dearth of space on this particular day?  And where is my breakfast in bed? Where, in short, is the bathetic display of big love?  Lutho! Rien! Niets! Nada! – Nothing!

Who cares who picked this day?  What does that have to do with the price of an obscenely large and deliciously vulgar, radiant diamond? The day is here.  It has been picked.  In fact, it was picked more than two thousand years ago.  How dare he be so insolent as to shun over two thousand years of tradition?  It’s like ignoring gifts at Christmas or chocolate at Easter.  It is reprehensible.

He says it’s all commercialised and it’s just a money making ploy.  Yes it is.  What’s wrong with that?  It is time for shopkeepers to make money and women to get extravagant gifts and get spoiled rotten and get fed in fancy restaurants.  It is, in fact, a most perfect of times.

He says it’s not indigenous to our culture.  Oh, please.  Neither is Jesus but we embrace and celebrate him, don’t we?  Don’t come to me with talk of culture.  It won’t wash.  It’s Valentine’s Day!  Dish up those flowers!

Do I have the only man in the world who is so totally utilitarian?  I thought I’d check it out with some of my male friends and find out what they think.

One said ‘What about men?’  “What”?  You cannot be serious.   “What about men”?  What kind of silly question is that?  I told him that with an attitude like that he deserves to be celibate till next Valentines Day.  Then he’ll see what about men. Huh!

I thought I’d have better luck with someone else.  But the next one said “Why must it be all about women”?  What is wrong with you people? See, that’s why he’s single.  It’s Valentines Day.  It’s romance, and romance is all about women.

“Don’t you know that, you daft git”?

Yet another, more charming one of my male friends said he is persuaded by the idea of skimpy lingerie.  He said he was heading off to get something supremely sexy for his lady to wear, champagne and pink Rose petals to sprinkle over the bed.  “That’s more like it.” He’s a saucy minx.  There is hope!

The thing is that they are all really missing the point.  It’s not about men and women.   It’s not even about sexy lingerie.  It’s about the L-word, and as anyone who wasted their early teens on Mills and Boon, or developed an addiction to Rom Com movies is well aware; the real L-word is LOVE!  It is all about the fight to save love.

Valentines Day didn’t just appear.  There’s history here.  There’s context.  It’s important.   Two thousand years ago, (ok, it wasn’t in South Africa, but it was in the world) the Emperor Claudius II could not gather an army because when they were away from their wives the men became homesick and lovesick which made them ineffective moping drips instead of fierce fearless warriors.  So, the Emperor Claudius II decided that he would put paid to love and ban marriage in the hope of holding the men’s focus on the battlefield.

My man says that could never happen with Zulu men.  He says that women, love and passion strengthen Zulu men when they go to battle.  That’s why they are such voracious lovers and ferocious warriors.

Anyway, there was a certain priest, by the name of Father Valentine, who loved love.  He took pity on young lovers.  He assisted in their trysts and he married them in secret.  When the emperor discovered his shenanigans, he had Father Valentine arrested and imprisoned.  Emperor Claudius II commanded Father Valentine to be beaten with clubs, and then beheaded.  His execution was on February 14, in the year 270.   Even Pope Julius I is said to have built a church near Ponte Mole to Saint Valentines memory. Yes, he was made a saint.  On the day of his execution, those lovers, would be lovers and married folk who Father Valentine had assisted brought flowers, most specifically roses to celebrate his life and commiserate his death. 

And so, on the 14^th February every year from 270 until 2013, men have offered gifts of roses to their lady loves in honour of St Valentine, the martyr to love, without whom the sacred rituals of love and marriage and canoodling and kissing and cuddling and divine lasciviousness might have been irretrievably abolished.

Surely that deserves, at the very least, a pair of diamond studs, a silk negligee and a bottle of Cristal.

Neh, sithandwa sami!  

Nothing, Like Something, Happens Anywhere!

Even though it’s generally accepted that GP stands for ‘gangster’s paradise’ and that Johannesburg is at the precipice of that paradise, it is still a horrendous and sickening blow when one hears of anyone who has been burgled, attacked or hijacked.

The horror compounds as the degrees of separation between crime and victim diminish in distance from oneself.  First it’s strangers one is reading about in the papers. Then a friend tells you about the friend of a friend.  It’s a neighbour whose home is broken into.  A friend’s of mine’s car window is smashed and her handbag stolen.  Why she had not heard about putting everything in the boot is beyond me; but then, even though we accept that it can happen to ‘anyone’, somehow we take the word ‘anyone’ to mean ‘anyone else’.

So we do put our handbags on the passenger seat and leave the gate and door open while we run into the house quickly to fetch some forgotten item.  We go to Hillbrow to buy the hair for weaving and braiding, and the essential body care bargains.  We carry on as though this was crime free Switzerland because our spirit, that beautiful free thing, despite all evidence cannot fully admit to the necessity of imprisoning itself behind high walls and barred windows.  It hasn’t quite given access to the reality that there are places to which one really shouldn’t go and times at which it is wiser not to be beyond the bars and walls.

I’ve been pondering this because of two things that didn’t happen.  Why they didn’t happen I can only attribute to the effective vigilant collaboration of God and my Ancestors.  I am very grateful to both.

I drove to Hillbrow, to get my favourite skincare secret which is imported from West Africa.  As far as I know this is the only shop in South Africa that sells it.  I had to park a couple of blocks from my destination, but didn’t mind.  There’s a bustle and vibrancy to Hillbrow which I find fascinating.  I always enjoy the drama of being in the midst of it.  Nothing negative has ever happened.

As I stopped at the end of the block and waited for a space in the traffic, a man nudged me.  “I like your ring”, he told me.  It’s a gold pinkie ring with a tension set diamond.  It lives on my finger to the extent that I hardly observe I have it on.  “I’ll buy it from you”, he said.  Well, by now my heart was racing.  He was an unsavoury looking character.  He smiled and reached into his pocket, probably to pay for the ring. Who knows?  I didn’t wait to find out.  I turned and fled into the traffic.  I don’t think he followed me.  I didn’t look back.  “Nothing happened,” I kept repeating to myself as I engaged the lady in the shop in unnecessarily long conversation, afraid to go into the street.

This episode had already faded from my mind by the time I drove to Bedfordview to have dinner with a friend.  It was my favourite kind of evening.  A lovely restaurant, an excellent meal, treasured company and stimulating conversation.

As I drove home I thought nothing of the car that took the same off ramp.  I only vaguely registered the fact that the left headlight was brighter than the right.  I was wrapped up in my lovely evening.  I don’t think I even noticed that this car followed me onto the second highway.  I was contemplating the conversation and Lobster Thermador and listening to Simphiwe Dana and feeling at one with all the earth’s good.

Suddenly the car came up close behind me.  I recognised the uneven lights.  Assuming that anyone coming that close in the fast lane wanted to pass, I moved into the middle lane.  They stayed behind me.  My internal alert was activated.  I was already at my off ramp so I moved to the outer lane. The car did the same.  Alarms were going off in my brain.  I thought of the environment beyond this off ramp.  Too many dark spots flashed through my mind, so I swerved back onto the highway.  The car did the same.

It was after midnight on a Monday.  Few people were about.  I sped up.  The car kept pace.   I thought “Oh hell no, I’m not getting highjacked”.  I put my foot full down and took full advantage of the power of German engineering.  I lost them.

By the time I got home I was repeating a steady mantra of, “Nothing happened.  I’m fine nothing happened”. My heart was racing.  My hands unsteady.  But the truth was, nothing had happened.  I know many will say, in all wisdom ‘Stay away from Hillbrow’ and ‘Don’t go out late’. People get hijacked and robbed in Sandhurst too and sometimes in the middle of the day.

There are now no degrees of separation, and still nothing has happened.  I am unscathed.  I’m alive thanks to God and my Ancestors.  So doesn’t it make sense to celebrate the gift of life by living it?  Does it make sense not to touch different aspects of this wonderful Jozi?   Should fear keep one from friends who live on the other side of other highways?

I’m reminded of a poem by Phillip Larkin which says; “Nothing, like something, happens anywhere”!

Don’t Make Us Sick!

The plane back from Cape Town was full, unfortunately for me.  The place next to mine was occupied by a slight woman who was curled up as much as those little seats will allow.  She looked wretched.  She was coughing and sneezing and wheezing.  It was horrific.

The words were out before I knew I’d said them.  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, are you sick?’  She gave me a look intended to vaporise me into extinction.  She coughed. She sneezed.  I recoiled.  I looked around frantically for somewhere else to sit.  I was willing to sit anywhere else, even a bucket seat right up the back.    Alas, the plane was full.

The idea of two hours of my life agglutinated to diseasedness, filled me with disgustedness.  Eeek!   I didn’t mean to be unsympathetic, but the thought of travelling all the way from Cape Town to Johannesburg imprisoned next to this snivelling, miserable bacteria spewing incubus of who-knows-what iniquitous micro-organisms filled me with total dread.

My dread was coupled with sufficient indignation to remember that it is enshrined in the bill of rights that ‘everyone has the right to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being.’   This person was in contravention of my rights.  Sometimes what you know can’t help you.  Besides, what was she doing here?   She should be home in bed where her noxiousness could do no harm?  Or at least, surely, she should have swallowed drugs that suppress all of this ghastly manifestation of malady.  Why has she not taken drugs – any drugs, copious pestilence suppressing drugs?  The law dictates that she must.

She probably told her friends and family and colleagues ‘I’ll be fine’.   And she will, no doubt, be very fine.  What about the rest of us?  What about me?  She will be fine because the iniquitous micro-organisms are looking for fresh fertile healthy macro-organisms to contaminate.  I had boarded this aeroplane the picture of perfect health and vitality.  I could already feel that little scratchiness beginning to niggle at the back of my throat. I was sure I could feel the pneumonic plague entering my lungs as I breathed.  It was as though it was seducing my body against my will; gently kissing my flesh assessing its receptiveness, caressing my throat before imperceptibly penetrating and sighing with satisfaction.  I imagined I heard it; felt it.  It’s enough to induce a case of chronic agoraphobia.

The trouble is that we have all been made to feel at fault for giving in to the flu.  We have allowed ourselves to be persuaded that as long as we can haul our ailing, perniciously failing, disease sodden bodies about; as long as we can walk, we can get on with it.  When we call in sick to work instead of paying heed to the law of the environment they demand to know how sick we actually are.  They insist on knowing the exact time that we will feel well enough to work again as though illness has exact automated parameters.

When I was working on that Soap Opera they tried to tell me that if I didn’t get up and come back to work immediately they’d find another actress with better health.  Can you believe that shit?  I’d had an operation, for heaven’s sake, which was essential to my future wellbeing and something went pear-shaped so I didn’t recover within the time predicted by the Dr.  I told them to find another actress.  I mean, what are you gonna do?  I was sick.  I didn’t know how long I’d be sick for.  I hadn’t expected to be sick in the first place.

“If you’re not better by Monday we’ll have to find another actress”, they told me on Thursday. After I’d created this character to be popular. I’d created her over three years and people loved her. I get sick and my job is threatened? It’s a bunch of bullshit, isn’t it? So I told them to shove it where the sun don’t shine.  It’s not as though I was actually going to kill myself for that crappy little production.  It wasn’t exactly Brideshead, or Downton Abbey.  I might have dragged my pernicious little sickness about for one of those productions, but for Backstage?  No! Three years is plenty for any actresses soul to do badly written embarrassingly poorly directed prime time TV. Thank God “Society” came along to redeem my reputation and ability as an actress.

Anyway, back to the airplane and it’s flu-infested occupant.  It occurs to me that it would be a good idea if there were hermetically sealed isolation compartments on planes so that the infectiously disease ridden ones who insist on travelling can do so without endangering anyone else.

On landing I ran from the plane and out of the terminal building.  I breathed the exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke of the pavement outside. The air had never felt so pure. My lungs suddenly felt clear.   I could breathe again.  Equilibrium was restored.

It was all too short lived.  As I write this I am sitting up in bed.  I am a snivelling, miserable bacteria spewing incubus of who-knows-what iniquitous micro-organisms.  I am where I should be by constitutional decree.

Real Men Don’t Rape!

I’m horrified by rape.  I’m shocked, troubled, perturbed and so angered that men rape women.  Yes, I know men get raped too.  It’s horrifying too, but this, for once, isn’t about men.  It’s about women.

I saw an article about a British actress who is talking to young women about how not to get raped.  I was aghast when I saw that headline.  “How not to get raped”.  There’s a formula?  Do tell.

‘Don’t get drunk, don’t be sick in the gutter and don’t stagger about in the wrong clothes at midnight’. 

She’s right about that, of course.  Being sick drunk in a gutter staggering about is no way for a young lady to behave.  Don’t do that.  It’s not elegant.  But now, “the wrong clothes?”  What are they?  Isn’t that the kind of language that led to The Slut Walk?  Doesn’t that put the blame for the rape on the woman not getting her skirt length right?  Doesn’t that suggest that she deserves it because she’s attractive?

Not so long ago there was a young woman who was gang raped in India.  According to reports she wasn’t scantily dressed or behaving lewdly or staggering about.  She was a medical student on her way home on the bus.  She eventually died of her wounds.  Why did those men – a group of them – do that to her?  Not one amongst them had decency or conscience?  Not!  What goes on in the minds of men that makes them think that’s any way to treat another human being.  Do they not have women in their lives?  I’m really not saying anything original. They have a sister, a mother, a daughter.  They have women who they love and who they would protect with every fibre of their beings from suffering such a fate, so what gets into them?  Having said that, though, statistics also show that most rapes take place within the family structure.  It boggles the mind.

Why does society not teach men not to rape?  Even if a woman is as this British actress describes, drunk, fashionably miniskirted and staggering about, should human decency not cause a man to make sure she gets home safely without attacking her and violating her.   Does she not have the right to dress however she pleases, or however pleases her?  They should be taught from kindergarten to university and beyond not to rape.  Just like they’re taught their ABCs and not to steal and they should learn the lessons and never forget them.  In fact, they should be made scared to rape.

Way back in the 1990somethings Charlize Theron did an anti rape campaign here in South Africa.  “Real Men Don’t Rape”.  She wore simple generic black sat on a chair and talked about how men are rapists and they have to stop.  (Long time ago, don’t remember the exact script, but that was the gist).  Men in SA were up in arms because she said “men are rapists”.   They wittered on about ‘how dare she call us rapists blah blah blah’.   I mean, seriously?  Talk about missing the point but totally!  If the cap fits etcetera!  Anyway, they made it all about them.  There was so much noise made about ‘how dare she call us rapists’ that the real message got lost.  And yet, look at the rape statistics in SA.  They’re astoundingly horrifying.  So if the men are not rapists, who is doing the raping, the tokoloshes ?

At the time I was having a conversation with a man friend about the campaigne.   He’s a good guy normally.   This guy said,  “I don’t care about her message, but that accent really gives me a hard on.  I’d rape her”.    And only when he’d registered that I had not moved.  I had not broken a smile.  I was frozen in horrified, traumatised, furious disbelief did he say “I’m joking.  You women must get a sense of humour”. Because I’m sure if he’d been with men they’d have had a good laugh and agreed, “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind tapping that!  I’d give her one!  I’d bend her over!”  Couldn’t you slap them all with a plank and drive a few dozen rusty six inch nails right into their gonads?

Oh for heaven’s sake sit down.  We know it’s not all men, but it’s men.  That is a stone hard, iron cast, indelible, inescapable, global fact.  And when women try to talk to men about rape, look how they behave.  Even the good ones manage to sound like total uneducable tossers.  ‘Get a sense of humour?”

So all this talk about women dressing like sluts and etcetera makes men (ok not you, but other men) believe that if a woman is scantily dressed, if she is drunk, if she is a little less than elegant in her behaviour, she’s “asking for it”.  And her screams of “NO!”  Her pleading, her obvious distress somehow get interpreted to mean ‘She’s begging for it’.  And men say they’re the logical ones?

They say rape isn’t about sex it’s about violence.  OK!  But it’s sexual violence, isn’t it?  So yes, first you need the sick bastards who have a propensity for such, and those, it seems are numerous, beyond numerous.  They are men.  Get my drift?

We need to change how we educate men.  That’s the only way.  And if they rape they should be castrated.   That whole machinery down there should be lobbed off.  No more penis.  No more gonads.  No more raping.  It makes sense to me.  What if you get the wrong guy?  Well, oops, sorry!  What if he’s innocent?  Again, oops, sorry!  But I’ll bet they wouldn’t rape us anymore.  That’s the only point I see as being important.  Rape Must Stop!

Those guys who gang raped the woman in India?  I’d slice their entire sexual organ region off without anesthetic.   I’d invite other men in the hear them scream.  I’d tell them, “There but for the grace of God goes you, potential rapist”.

And so, if they value their penis they’ll hang on to it.  It’s easy.  Don’t rape and don’t make a woman so mad that she accuses you of rape because in the eyes of my court you are guilty because she said so.  Prove that you didn’t do it.

It’s not fair.  I know.  It’s not just.  I know.  It’s not whatever-whatever-whatever.  I know.  See if the victim gives a damn.  Whatever!  Was it fair that she was raped?  Was it?  Was it just?   It’s the war of the sexes and we women are losing it right now.  Look at how society thinks.  Don’t wear short skirts?  The skirt isn’t going to rape you.  Wear it.

 

 

It’s men who rape.

Farewell Mr Malema!

I had a conversation a few years back it went like this and led me to this article.  I was highly amused at myself.  That was April 2010.  The article below was in The Star Newspaper.  Mr Malema was at his zenith and despite all the outrage no one even tried to shut him down.  And now Mr Malema is gone.  We’re going to miss him – ish!  That’s not true.  We’re going to forget him – ish!  Well, maybe not.  He’s pretty unforgettable.  Anyway, this one is in memory of Mr Malema and the Malema Years.  Farewell, Mr Malema.  It’s been real.

_______________________________

“Why doesn’t the President want to probe Mr Malema?

“Indeed, it’s not as if Mr Malema couldn’t do with a good hard probe.”

“JZ says there isn’t enough proof to warrant a probe.”

“But surely the proof is in the probing.”

“I think the President has enough probing on his plate, don’t you?”

It was all quite light hearted probing banter until one among us lost it.

“Tselane, you’re not a politician so why don’t you focus on your own business instead of insulting people.  Why don’t you stand up in the appropriate forums and structures and say something, if you have something to say? It’s because you are not brave like Comrade OR.” …………..and the tirade went on.

Whao, Buddy, calm down!  Don’t blame me; blame Mr Malema. People make jokes because people are angry. Just about everyone is in a thunderous rage because of Mr Malema.

The PAC youth are baying for his blood and are going to “injure him to death”.  What is that?  Sounds like some kind of slow 15th century torture.  Maybe they plan something like thumb screws or the rack.  They’ll tighten the thumb screws or stretch him out on the rack all the while demanding   ‘Who initiated the march in Sharpville in 1960”?  If Mr Malema doesn’t respond “PAC, PAC!” they will tighten the thumbscrews or stretch him taller on the rack.  If Mr Malema doesn’t retract and express his regret the PAC youth will ‘turn the country upside down’.  Come on, guys, it’s not our fault.   We read the history books.  Our parents were there.  We know what happened.  Somebody, please talk to them – bring peace and understanding.  Bring calm.

Afriforum are in a frenzy of seething apoplexy because Mr Malema chose to sing  ‘kill the Boar’ on Human Rights Day!  Afriforum managed to have the song banned.  But that’s not all.  The farmers, angry and incensed, rock up at Luthuli House with a list of those among them who have been killed on the farms. The list is, no doubt, meant to drive home the dangers of such songs being sung. To all amazement the list is torn up in their faces adding insult to injury.  Then, Mr Malema, in all his political wisdom, threatens the farmers with fatal wounding and reminds them of the regrettable battle with the IFP in 1994.  Would a little bit of conciliation be too much to ask?  Could someone engender some calm?

Steve  Hofmeyr is well irked with Mr Malema as he has pointed out clearly in his acerbic little letter.  The letter is pure and profound, unbridled anger; ‘a pitiful black man living in denial of your own impotence’  ‘the only thing you should be remembered for is your share in falling short of a brilliant idea: a working South Africa’. Eina!   Mense, kalm, assebleif!

Women and the men who love them are furious with Mr Malema. So furious, in fact, that they thought it worth spending a great deal of time and effort taking him to the equality court for ‘hate-speech, harassment and unfair discrimination’.  They won their case.  Mr Malema must apologise.  But can he muster up a suitably contrite and elaborate apology? Perhaps Mr Malema could employ Mr Tiger Woods’ apology writer and after a well rehearsed performance we the women will begin to calm down.

The Journalists are in a righteous tizzy over Mr Malema’s threat that he is going to expose them for sleeping with politicians and taking bribes to get inside information.  One journo who allegedly has millions of unaccounted for moola in his bank account has been singled out.  Now that the media are pissed off, if there is anything damning, mildly reprehensible, or even down right irrelevant that they can possibly find out about Mr Malema they bore us with it.  Mr Malema has declared war and so to war they must go.  But we would be spared all this tiresome side issue if the ladies and gentlemen of the media would calm down.

I’m pissed off with Mr Malema because everything is all about Mr Malema;  all people talk about is how pissed off they are with him; and how dumb they think he is and what a crook he is; or, like my friend, they blow a gasket in his defence.

I am pissed off at Mr Malema because Mr Malema has killed calm.

My friend is right, I am not brave like Comrade O.R.; I’d be terrified to go to a structure or forum and take on Mr Malema.  So I make jokes with friends about the endless headlines and wish, if for no other purpose than to soothe my sad insufficiency of Comrade O.R.-ness, that everyone would take a step back, take a deep breath and just calm down!

I Skydived! Go Figure!

There is something supremely satisfying about stepping out of one’s comfort zone and doing what is entirely out of character.  It is exciting and very empowering to do something the subject of which has always stirred in one a consequential frisson of nervous palpitations.

I’m not into extreme sport.  In truth, I’m not really into sport full stop. I enjoy Wimbledon.  The Olympics is obligatory and I watch football world cups, but only when the tournament is fought on South African soil.  Luckily my partner is a bookish man of intellectual pursuits, so I don’t have to suffer those boring little games on television every weekend.  Chiefs vs. Pirates again and again! I can’t. Although, I will admit to having a healthy appreciation for all that potent display of masculine virility.

When one of my girlfriends decided that for her birthday she wanted the thrill of jumping out of an aeroplane that’s flying at terrorizing speed thousands of feet above the earth, and asked me if I would join her, naturally I said

“Of course not”.

I offered to hold her glass of champagne while she risked life, limb and sanity.  I refused to even be persuaded.  I closed the subject down.  Jump out of an aeroplane?  Why would I do that?  I could not for the life of me come up with a single reason for jumping out of an aeroplane.  No!

I know that it is popular practice for other people to sky dive but, honestly, this is an  activity so far removed from my life that it has never occurred to me that I would ever do it.  The subject simply isn’t part of my consciousness; therefore it never came up, until now.  Now that it had come up, however, every cell and sinew in my body screamed “Are you mad? Never”!

When one is vehemently opposed to something; when the thought of walking barefoot over sharp shards of glass seems infinitely preferable to the offered activity, one must ask oneself why one is so vehemently opposed, I think.  One might find that the answer to the ‘Why’ is a silly answer.  Or equally, one might find that one is very happy with the answer.  Fear came immediately to mind.  Oh my goodness.  Was that really it?  I’m scared?  But people survive this sky diving thing.  How scary can it be?  But fear is not a thing to give in to.  Fear is a thing to conquer.

I started to come over all G I Jane and Wonder Woman.  Some ‘thing’ in me that I didn’t recognise decided that fear was a shameful reason to refuse.  What was the worst thing that could happen?  Perhaps the parachute would not open and I would plunge thousands of feet to my death – a romantically dramatic way to go.  But I didn’t for a moment believe that would happen.  I broached the subject friends and each one had a sky diving horror story to tell.  It’s weird how people love to tell tales of doom.  I heard about the guy who plunged hundreds of feet to what should have been his death, broke every bone in his body, but lived to tell the tale.  I heard about the guy who was rescued mid air by fellow dare devils who saw just in time his impending demise.  I heard about the guy who got caught up in his parachute and ended up being strangled by a rope or string or something on the way down.  I heard all the extraordinary anecdotes.

All this telling of disaster came down to one thing.  It all came down to the provocation of one of the most ignoble of sentiments – extreme terror.  But should I give in to terror?  Terror seems like a thing that one can with honour and without shame give in to.  I thought so.  But something in me that I didn’t recognise asked me if I should not face it, confront it and tell it that it’s name may be Terror, but my name is Tambo and we’re gonna fight it out.  After a glass or two of bubbly and a long hot bubble bath I made a choice.  I chose that I would jump, and as Ruth in the Bible so eloquently put it, ‘If I perish, I perish!’

We would free fall for forty seconds and then we would pull the shoot, my tandem instructor, who has jumped seven thousand times, informed me as I sat apprehensively in the plane waiting for the instruction to jump, all the while questioning my good sense.

I prayed.  I placed myself firmly in God’s hands, then fell into nothing.

To fall from that aeroplane and to be totally exposed to the air was terrifying.  However, once I made peace with the fact that I was there and I was alive and I wasn’t dying the experience turned into one of absolute freedom.  To free fall for those forty seconds was to feel inexplicably cradled and safe.  I felt as though I was floating on the breath of The Almighty.  My lungs became so full of pure clean air that for a moment I thought I would burst.  The air filled me beyond my lungs’ capacity and I don’t know when I have felt more energized.  I danced in the air as I fell.  It was invigorating.

When the shoot was finally pulled we were lifted.   Well, actually, we just slowed down really fast, so it felt as though we were lifted, and the lifting was superlative.  We flowed through the atmosphere.  I felt as though we belonged there.  I felt as though we were accepted and embraced and welcomed and cradled and loved by God.  It was the feeling of God. It was most unexpected.  It was divine in the truest sense.  I felt completely at peace.  My tandem instructor wanted to talk, but I had to demand silence.  How do you hold a conversation up here where all is peace and quiet and freedom and total solitude except for the dude on your back?  He must pretend he’s not there.  Really!

It was a beautiful and life enhancing experience. Was it not Shakespeare who wrote ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy?’  I know that he wasn’t talking about sky diving, but the insight fits.

When we landed I was so high and alive.  My tandem instructor asked me if I would like to do it again some time?

“Hell NO! But it was lovely. Thank you.  I’m satisfied”.

To Speak or To Be Spoken For

Contemplating, the way one does when stuck in a situation that doesn’t allow for the normal fiddle and fidget with social network by cell phone, nor twitter, and facebook, nor shouting into the phone deafening the person next to you because you haven’t yet grasped the fact that modern technology allows for your voice to be heard through your handset even at a whisper, the subject of the Spokesperson popped up in my mind.  The spokesperson seems to be the accessory du jour for anyone aspiring to be anyone in this newly evolving, rather unique South Africa that we are still becoming.   Corporations have them, political parties have them, and latterly individuals are getting them.  Why?

Who needs a spokesperson, really?  I understand it to be another word for a public relations person. Someone who puts the position of the corporation into neat sound bites, or lengthy opinion papers so that the public at large know what the corporation is all about.  Or so that things can be expressed in non-hysterical ways that are easily palatable to the public at large.  It’s all about communication with the public at large.  Isn’t that it?

It stands to reason.  A corporation can’t have everyone and anyone running around willy-nilly giving opinions on what the company position might be.   We don’t care what the junior HR navvy would do if they had the decision making power.  A corporation must have one voice speaking with one position and that position is decided by many in meetings and conference calls and it all comes out very neatly when expressed to us the public and we are happy and they are happy and happiness abounds.  It’s all very kumbuya.

Political parties, similarly, need spokespeople, desperately.  So that when the President says ‘tell the press to f-off’, for example.  I know this is something that our president especially would never say, not in a million years.  I’m just making an example.  When the President says that, the spokesperson will stand before the assembled press and tell them that ‘the president wishes them the very best in all their future fornications and is unfortunately unable to attend to them at this time due to pressing matters of state’.  Much more palatable.  Congratulations and thank you Mr or Ms Spokesperson.

So it is understood, is it not, that I do get what a spokesperson is for.  I’m not mad.  But then why does a person need a spokesperson?  I know you’re wondering ‘what person has a spokesperson’?  Don’t make me name names.  They know who they are.

Are we a society so lacking basic charm that we need people to interpret us so that we don’t offend?   I mean if you ask a Common-Joe Moholi what is your position on the arms deal, for example, does Common-Joe Moholi need to go to his ‘spokesperson’ to articulate his position, or can he simply open the mouth that God saw fit to affix to his face and speak?  Would the utterings of Common-Joe Moholi cause a national gasp, and if cause a gasp they would, should we be spared this gasp-worthy commentary?  Let The Common-Joe Maholies speak I say.   In fact make them speak for themselves.

Phanzi spokespersons Phanzi.  Or, actually, not Phanzi exactly because if you are a busy person in the public eye doing, doing and doing more then perhaps you don’t have the time to think about what you say because you’re too busy doing what you do.  You might forget how well bred you are when people come along with the kind of questions that make you want to smack them and send them back to school.  Stupid questions.  Obvious questions.  Questions that they can find the answer to by just picking up a document or Googling.

I’m starting to contemplate a spokesperson for my self.  That’s how deluded I’ve become. Delusions of grandeur, right here.  There was a ‘red carpet’ for some movie and a journo stopped me on the carpet and asked me  “Why are you here tonight”?  I thought it must be a trick question.

And even after all these years I just can’t come up with the sound bite when I’m confronted with a journalist asking me “What’s it like….”.  I was asked that just months ago and I shuddered.  Luckily I’d been sent the questions via email, so the journo wasn’t privy to the expletive response.  My heart sank. I thought.  “No, I can’t”.  I didn’t read on through the other questions.  I was asking myself why this person was asking me these non-question questions.  What does he want to know?

I hate the question “What’s it like being Oliver Tambo’s daughter”.  I could use a spokesperson with the patience to answer that.  I think it’s not even a question.  I think the asker of the question has no imagination and wants me to do their job for them.  Besides, I don’t know the answer in fewer than 1000 words.  And the other one that I hate is  “What was it like growing up in England”.  Seriously?  What aspect of growing up in England?  No fewer than 3000 words because it’s not my job to break down the question. Break it down for me.  What do you want to know?  In fact, don’t bother.  Just end the interview.  It’s too uninteresting.  I can’t.  I don’t have to.  You can’t make me.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my Daddy.  I love being Oliver Tambo’s daughter.  What a Daddy to be proud of.  But ‘what’s it like’?  What are you asking?  Is there a real and specific question in there?  Answer:  ”It’s great”.  See two of us can play that game.  Ask me a question I can answer or speak to my Spokesperson.

What is the result?  Journalists will think I’m arrogant.  I’m not. I’m just bored.  I mean what boring questions.  And most of the time I don’t even know why I ‘m being asked them.  They want to interview me?  Why? I’ve done nothing earth shattering in more than 12 months.  Jeez, it’s been longer than more than 12 months.  I’m in danger of becoming an oxygen thief.

Being Oliver Tambo’s daughter isn’t an achievement.  It’s a gift.  I don’t think it alone should earn me the time of any self- respecting journalist when there is real pressing stuff to write about; and important, relevant people to talk to.  I need to do my next big thing.  It’s coming.  I’m working on it. It will be worth their time, I promise.

When my next big thing comes I hope they will interview me about it. I hope they won’t ask me “What’s it like……”. I’m not grand, yet.  So I won’t need a spokesperson just yet.   I shall speak for myself.