‘You can’t say those kinds of things about us’

By Doug Downie

It had been a lousy evening. There was trouble at home, which was about 10 000 miles away. The lines of communication were being shut down. It was very difficult to be in the dark about someone like a daughter.

There was trouble brewing in my current base as well. A stink was rising into the sky, and there was stern disagreement about the quality of the odour.

I decided to go down to the pub. I make no excuses about my love for beer.

Luckily it was quiet down there, not dead but not crazy the way it sometimes is. I sat down on a stool at the bar next to two guys who were involved in what seemed like a quite earnest discussion.

“You can’t say those kinds of things about us.”

“What kind of things?”

“Personal things. Private business kind of things. It doesn’t look good.”

“You’re right there, it doesn’t look good.”

“You arrogant little prick, what do you mean by that?”

“I mean, if you don’t want to look bad, then don’t do bad things.”

“Who are you to say such things? We gave you freedom of the press, and we can take it away!”

“What are you guys talking about?” I butted in.

They both looked at me as if I was a slug doing a striptease. Then they turned away and continued with their garbled banter.

“Are you threatening me?” asked the journalist.

“Take it the way you want,” answered the politician.

“Someone has to check up on you.”

“And someone has to check up on you. Half of what you print is garbage.” He had a point. In my own meagre and easy to render experience of an interview I had been misquoted. “You believe that you fill that role? With your absolute imperative to sell newspapers?”

“We are independent of the state, and political parties.”

“We say someone independent of you should check up on what you do.”

“I get it.” I interjected, having been listening with some interest.

“You,” pointing to the politician, “want your homeys to check up on yourselves, and him and his homeys, and you,” pointing to the journalist, “want your homeys to check up on yourselves”.

I paused while the bartender made some god-awful cappuccino drink. Those machines are just too noisy.

“Who the hell are you?” they said in unison.

They were both incredibly arrogant. It oozed from them like sweat in a sauna. We all know the arrogance of politicians. It’s common knowledge. After deception and hypocrisy it’s a defining characteristic. I’d witnessed the arrogance of journalists on a flight out of Madagascar after the coup was over not too long ago. They piled onto the small plane as if encased in an inviolable bubble, forming a hermetic and exclusive little group, a dozen of them, oblivious and even appearing somewhat soiled at being in the presence of lesser mortals. We waited on the tarmac for more than 20 hot minutes for one of their party who was late, not wanting to leave his Jack Daniel’s half full on the bar. They were all clearly Too Important for the rest of us. Later they were whisked through customs while we struggled with our burdens and sweated in an endless queue.

“You don’t want to know.” I answered. “But I’ll say this … you’ve got nothing to moan about,” looking at the politician, “you’re in the public eye, you use the public money, you milk your position for all the perks you can get, people have voted you into your mostly useless office. You need to be monitored by someone other than you and your homeys. End of story, get over yourself”.
I took a big hit off my Windhoek.

“You,” I said to the journalist, “keep on ranting about how government institutions can’t be watchdogs over themselves, about the independence of oversight processes, yet you want your homeys to watch over you! No one else can self-regulate, but you can! A bit of a contradiction, don’t you think?”

“Listen … ”

“That was a rhetorical question.” I turned my gaze on the politician. “As for you, do you really expect any sentient being, with a shred, even a slice, of intelligence, to believe that you can form a watchdog over him from a selection of your homeys? Your dice are so loaded that only a fool would roll with you.”

They both began to object simultaneously, and I thought of a Cecil Taylor piano solo. Out of nowhere a little parade of vuvuzelas passed by. Bafana were due to play Ghana. I guzzled the rest of my beer and as I got off my stool to leave I tipped an imaginary hat to my imaginary friends.

“Later.”

I was off into the night, hoping the lines of communication might still be open, and I might still hear the voice of beauty and truth. And that Bafana would win.

Doug Downie is a lecturer in the department of zoology and entomology at Rhodes University