While we await the African Union’s response to the Zimbabwean election, I thought we’d find out what South Africans believe to be our most embarrassing moment as a nation and a continent. For me, Robert Mugabe thanking President Mbeki for his role in this fiasco is by far and away our most cringeworthy moment.
All it needed was for Mugabe to say : “Without you we would not be where we are today” – and we would have been walking around with brown paper bags over our heads for the next six years.
Imagine : “…and in conclusion, might I just say that Zimbabweans are deeply indebted to South Africa for the incredible assistance that they have given us in making our country what it is today (television cameras panning across a scene that looks like the aftermath of the “Battle of the Somme”). My only hope is that we can do the same for you some day”.
Some might look at the “Crossing of the Rubicon speech” by PW Botha, which turned out to be a light paddle across the Zoo Lake. Mind you that damp squib was lovely with a serving of chips and a bottle of Chateaux Meths Derivative 2007.
In terms of Africa, it has to be Mugabe telling the cameras, during the voting at the run-off election, that he was “upbeat [about the result] and hungry”. Then posing for the cameras while he cast his vote. Dear mother of all things holy……NO!! Mind you, his opposition should have pointed out to him that the rest of the country was “beat up and hungry”.
This dwarfed even his incredible “little dot” speech about British prime minister Gordon Brown which had us all reaching for the Valoid.
We should have our own versions of the Oscars: The Butchers:
Leon Schuster and Manto presenting the award for best actor in a genocide:
“…and the Butcher goes to his Excellency Robert Mugabe”.
Mugabe races to the stage and does his thank you speech:
“First of all I must pay tribute to Grace whose thirst for blood …President Mbeki, where are you please stand up (cameras panning to SA president waving them away furiously), and of course all the members of the military, police and veterans, but for whom there might still be some citizens left in Zimbabwe!”
What I don’t want in answer to these questions, are one-word answers like “Kortbroek”.
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