BusinessDay 08 Apr 2018
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BDSUNDAY<br />
Ten wives for Mandela<br />
(Celebrating Winnie Mandela, 1936-<strong>2018</strong>. Reprinted from Sunday<br />
Times, 20 May 1990)<br />
Winsome Winnie, South Africa’s Warrior Queen, as<br />
fearsome as she was alluring! Scorched earth was her<br />
formidablesymbol too. No wonder why, after three<br />
decades of white terror and mass murder, Mandela’s<br />
sweet reasonableness and compromise was, to her and<br />
to so many others, anathema!)<br />
*****<br />
Last Sunday I was at the stadium to welcome<br />
Nelson and Winnie Mandela, the<br />
world’s best known freedom fighters;<br />
and with me was my good friend Burning-Bright<br />
(BB), who I’m quite sure you<br />
don’t remember (it’s been an age). Well, he is the<br />
ex-Catholic priest turned pan-African nationalist<br />
who is a non-believer in half measures, sweetreasonableness<br />
or compromise. With him it’s<br />
all or nothing. The scorched earth is his formidable<br />
symbol. “Drive the bloody Boers into the sea,” he<br />
yells whenever the matter of South Africa comes<br />
up. And that’s his final solution.<br />
“Yeah,” he sneered as we waited for this amazing<br />
couple to arrive. “So, Mandela is free. But he<br />
won’t last.”<br />
“What?” I fairly screamed. “What do you mean<br />
by that?”<br />
“Mandela and his ANC want a multi-racial<br />
South Africa.”<br />
“Non-racial,” I corrected.<br />
“Same ten and ten pence. But they should<br />
never be allowed to have that.”<br />
“You mean the racists should stick to their<br />
guns?”<br />
“One man one goal,” he said with a mischievous<br />
smile.<br />
“You think South Africa is your Nigeria? Football<br />
is not their national obsession.”<br />
He pointed at the goal posts. “We’re in the<br />
National Stadium, aren’t we?”<br />
“The racists already accept one man one vote,”<br />
I said.<br />
“Yes, but with a lot of ands, ifs and buts.”<br />
“The goal is majority rule, isn’t it?”<br />
“A black South Africa is the goal,” he said with<br />
finality.<br />
I chewed this for a while. “So what’s to become<br />
of the whites?” I asked.<br />
“Let them go back to the Netherlands where<br />
they came from. KLM still flies, doesn’t it?”<br />
The loudspeakers were getting agitated. The<br />
most celebrated couple of the decade were soon<br />
to appear. Burning-Bright went on with his oddball<br />
notions.<br />
“You see, it’s like this,” he said. “These whites<br />
think they’re in South Africa to stay. . . .”<br />
NEW YOU CAN TRUST I SUNDAY <strong>08</strong> APRIL <strong>2018</strong><br />
“Verwoerd said Over my dead body,” I interrupted.<br />
“Vorster said Not in my lifetime,” he chimed in.<br />
“And they were right, weren’t they?”<br />
“When the Arabs invaded Spain and settled<br />
there, they said the same.”<br />
“And they were right- for seven centuries!”<br />
“Yes. For seven centuries they made it stick.”<br />
“Then came the day of reckoning . . .”<br />
“And the Spaniards-in-arms drove the stinking<br />
Arabs into the sea. It’s all down there in the history<br />
books . . . .”<br />
At that point the entire stadium came down<br />
in a tumultuous and prolonged ovation. The Tall<br />
Comrade had arrived, his Comely Consort at his<br />
side. Freedom Fighter Numbers 1 and 2 in all the<br />
world! They are the Lords of Azania! This land<br />
is ours. Papa’s Land! Seek ye first the political<br />
kingdom! The Clenched Fist! And they circled the<br />
arena in their chariot of light, their juggernaut of<br />
triumph. Mandela! Black Power! Mandela! Mandela!<br />
Free Mandela! Free Mandela! Mandela is<br />
free! Amandla! Mandela is free! O God bless our<br />
native Africa . . . ! Arise Oh compatriots . . . Freedom,<br />
Peace and Unity!!<br />
The crowed settled. The ceremonies began.<br />
Speeches. Speeches. Speeches. Song and dance.<br />
Song and dance. Need I make a Roll Call? Nigerian<br />
musicians of that Day, you know yourselves:<br />
Stand and take a bow! Yes sir! See you in the<br />
kingdom! But Oh come on, let’s have some fun.<br />
I saw that brother hug Onyeka Onwenu tightly,<br />
hungrily! Uuuu-weee! Gorgeous woman. Can’t<br />
really say I blame him. And his wife smiled- she<br />
has a lot to smile about, that’s for sure- after 27<br />
years. Burning-Bright simply lost his head and<br />
started ranting:<br />
“The brother didn’t touch a woman for 27<br />
years. 27 godforsaken years, man! Can you dig it?”<br />
BB had slipped into Americanese- as he sometime<br />
did whenever he got the spirit, when the<br />
excitement reaches deep and grazes his bone<br />
marrows and he loses control. He’s swimming in<br />
the void now. Totally spaced out.<br />
“The man should have ten wives and twenty<br />
girlfriends!” he screamed. “Fragrant! Succulent!<br />
Delicious! Psychdelic! O my God! A zoomanoid<br />
of feline femininity! Tall, short, fat, thin, buxom,<br />
flat, black, white! Let the brother taste them all!<br />
Every country he visits should bestow upon him<br />
a beautiful woman, a winsome Winnie! Yes. It’s<br />
in the African tradition! The man needs a (fourletter<br />
unprintable) jamboree! Body no be wood,<br />
after all! Nwokem, madugaemeghariaru! Kai! Do you<br />
know what it means to be without a woman for<br />
I saw war!<br />
What are<br />
you talking<br />
about?<br />
I saw hell<br />
right here at<br />
home! You<br />
fight for principles.<br />
Live<br />
or die, na de<br />
same ten and<br />
ten pence<br />
ONWUCHEKWA JEMIE<br />
ojemie@businessdayonline.com<br />
07039460162<br />
27 years? Greater love hath no man than this, that<br />
he gave 27 years of his (four-letter unprintable)<br />
life for his country! . . . .”<br />
BB’s strident baritone was mercifully drowned<br />
in the wild cheering of the vast sing-along crowd,<br />
thereby saving him from deserved censure for his<br />
irreverent not to speak of unclean thoughts. (You<br />
will applaud me, won’t you, dear reader, for not<br />
daring the nation’s leading Sunday paper to reproduce<br />
the stained vocabulary of this wild man!)<br />
Meanwhile, on the podium, Mandela was<br />
speaking of peace.<br />
“Isn’t he just ripe for the Nobel Peace Prize?”<br />
I said. “Just wait three years. You’ll see. Those<br />
Swedes can spot a winner from ten miles off. They<br />
just love South Africa!”<br />
“The Swedes are idiots; their grandparents<br />
were idiots before them. South Africans have<br />
nothing to be peaceful about!” BB was quite fired<br />
up. At least, he was back down on earth. “I hope to<br />
God the PAC stays awake to its responsibilities.<br />
Then we shall see war!”<br />
Now I was getting angry myself. “It’s easy to<br />
talk of war as long as it’s in someone else’s land.”<br />
“Rubbish!” replied BB. “I saw war! What are<br />
you talking about? I saw hell right here at home!<br />
You fight for principles. Live or die, na de same ten<br />
and ten pence.”<br />
“But come on, BB, Rome wasn’t built in a day.<br />
And don’t you think Mandela knows it? Even in<br />
freedom there are degrees.” I flipped the pages<br />
of the magazine on my lap. “And I quote: Dearly<br />
beloved, herein set forth is the wheel of your progress<br />
from hell on earth to paradise on earth and back again.<br />
First, the bourgeois nationalist revolution. Then socialism<br />
if you can manage it. Then finally, after numerous trials<br />
and backslidings, the celestial state of communism. There<br />
shall be no short-cuts, by-passes or frog-jumps. You can’t<br />
have it all in two weeks. It takes three. Amen. Epistle of<br />
St. Marx to the Dieticians, Chapter 5 Verses 7 to<br />
11. And so it is.”<br />
Burning-Bright shrugged. “You know what you<br />
are, O.J.? A thorough neanderthal.”<br />
“Thanks for the compliment. At any rate, Mandela<br />
is free. We are right to celebrate. And what’s<br />
more, now the Pope can go to South Africa, since<br />
he vowed never to go there until Mandela is free.”<br />
All’s fair in love and war.” People in<br />
love and soldiers in wartime are not<br />
bound by the rules of fair play. The<br />
expression is frequently used when two<br />
people are contending for the love of a<br />
third.<br />
The All Progressives Congress (PDP)<br />
in contention for the love of the Nigerian<br />
electorate appears to have employed this<br />
principle to undermine their opponents in<br />
order to achieve electoral victory.<br />
The looters’ lists recently rolled out by<br />
the APC-led Federal Government belong<br />
to this category.<br />
Obviously haunted by the spirit of<br />
non-performance, and fearful of the likely<br />
consequence of what critics have severally<br />
described as its colossal failure, government<br />
decided on an ambush against the<br />
major opposition in the country.<br />
Since coming to power, the APC government<br />
and Buhari administration have made<br />
“<br />
Off the Cuff<br />
Looters’ lists as political ambush<br />
fight against corruption their major thrust.<br />
But the manner the war is being fought has<br />
since raised some moral questions and has<br />
also become a moral burden on government.<br />
Although it blows hot openly, reports<br />
have shown that the current administration<br />
is itself a cesspool of corruption.<br />
While it persecutes members of the opposition<br />
on allegations of corruption, its<br />
members are sitting comfy on their own<br />
looted funds.<br />
It is a known fact that some corruption<br />
charges against certain people have been<br />
dropped simply because such individuals<br />
decided to cross carpet and now members<br />
of the APC.<br />
Within the inner caucus of the Buhari cabinet<br />
are people who should by now be guests<br />
of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission<br />
(EFCC), explaining how they came<br />
about their stupendous wealth. Government<br />
has also not bothered to investigate those<br />
who sponsored the President in the<br />
2015 election.<br />
Rolling out names of those who<br />
have been in and out of the courts<br />
and dramatising it three years after<br />
it took over power smacks of incompetence<br />
and insincerity. Brandishing<br />
some lists of prominent opposition<br />
Nigerians and branding them corrupt<br />
when such persons have not been<br />
found guilty by any competent law<br />
court amounted to putting the horse<br />
before the cart.<br />
Bringing out such lists a few<br />
months to another round of elections<br />
is a sign of cowardice and paranoia,<br />
and to say the least, defeatist.<br />
What it means is that the ruling<br />
party is afraid of facing a heated<br />
campaign and an exhibition of lack of<br />
confidence that it would garner winning<br />
votes this time around.<br />
Quick Takes<br />
$811bn<br />
This is the amount of money<br />
Nigeria and other countries<br />
across the world are<br />
expected to spend on 615<br />
upcoming oil and gas fields<br />
in the next eight years.<br />
S-e-a-l-e-d!<br />
It appears that the fate<br />
of John Odigie-Oyegun,<br />
national chairman of the<br />
All Progressives Congress<br />
(APC), may have<br />
been sealed. The oneyear<br />
tenure extension<br />
given to him recently by<br />
the National Executive<br />
Committee (NEC) may<br />
have been permanently<br />
quashed by President<br />
Muhammadu Buhari<br />
to please the Jagaban.<br />
And all the governors on<br />
the APC platform have<br />
already chorused, Amen.<br />
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