Book seems similar to Watergate revelations

WE HAVE reached our “Watergate” moment, but I shall call it our Sars-gate moment.

The brilliant, professional and unbiased former journalist Jacques Pauw has become South Africa’s Bob Woodward (one of the Washington Post journalists who reported on the Nixon-sanctioned break-in at the Democratic Party’s headquarters in Washington in 1972).

Pauw hints at the similarities by calling his anonymous sources “deep throats”, after the then-deputy director of the FBI, William Mark Felt sr, who was identified as the main anonymous source in 2005.

Pauw has done an excellent job of piecing together many of the previously unknown facts about Accused Number One, and the launching of his book, The President’s Keepers, is very timely indeed, coming as it does just before the ANC elective conference next month (if it happens).

In a bizarre way, these two scandals are eerily alike as Nixon chose to resign instead of facing impeachment, when the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach him on “obstruction of justice” charges.

Let us hope that history repeats itself, except, in our case, that he gets his day in court for the 783 (and mounting) charges against him. CONRAD SMIT

Durban