By the Grace of Bob almighty
Durban POISON
DEAR Madam Grace,
Under normal circumstances I would have called you Comrade, but it seems unlikely you’re in the mood for revolutionary greetings.
It is quite remarkable that you have achieved what nobody else could in 37 years – get Robert Mugabe to stand down. This is especially impressive at a time when it was becoming increasingly difficult to get him to stand up.
I understand you were born in Benoni? Shame. It’s not your fault. You were just little when you moved to then Rhodesia to live with your mother.
You should have married Ian Smith. He was probably a bit young for you, though. Instead you married the dashing Stanley Goreraza, an officer in the Zimbabwe air force.
I can only imagine how you and he must have celebrated when you got a secretarial position in Robert Mugabe’s office.
Were you sitting on your boss’s lap taking dictation when you accidentally fell pregnant? That sort of thing happens in offices everywhere. Robert clearly had a lot to dictate because you went on to have yet another little oopsie.
Apparently you tried to keep the births a secret, which couldn’t have been easy with the naughty little scamps crawling about practising their powers of pyrokinesis on the servants and vomiting up swarms of bees.
Anyway, you eventually did the right thing and got divorced and Robert also did the right thing and dispatched Stanley to the embassy in China.
In one of his more generous moods,
Robert later honoured your ex-husband for his long service in the air force by adding a bar to his medal.
That’s more than enough compensation for stealing a man’s wife, but I can’t help feeling Stan might have preferred to be given a bar in, say, Borrowdale.
Looking back, it might have been a tiny miscalculation on your part to get Robert to fire his vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa. Who would’ve thought a war veteran with strong military ties would have had the army in his corner? I’m no political strategist, but it seems to me that you should have moved a bit quicker with your plan. If Bob had abdicated the week before and installed you as president, you could have had the defence force rounded up and jailed.
You could have borrowed our army to imprison your army. We’re not using ours at the moment. Give our soldiers a mutton curry pie and a Coke and they’ll do anything.
When I watched the most peaceful coup unfold on telly, followed by pictures of him shaking hands with the generals, I assumed that Bob was behind the whole thing.
I read somewhere that you had started hitting him. I always assumed he enjoyed it. Perhaps he only said he did to keep you happy – some men are like that – and the only way he could get the beatings to stop was through military intervention.
Because the coup wasn’t a coup, it took six days to get your husband out of office. Which isn’t too bad when you consider it takes that long to get him out of the bath.
When our pitiful excuse for a president called for calm and restraint, do you think he was talking directly to you?
After the embarrassment of having South Africa captured by an overweight immigrant family from Uttar Pradesh, the last thing the region needed was to have you burst from state house shrieking and swinging a nineplug extension cable at anything that moved.
I don’t mean to be insensitive, but your coup was far more impressive than ours. You had tanks rolling down your streets.
Our coup happened in darkened rooms with sacks of cash being passed from one sweaty hand to another.
It’s still happening.
It’s the slowest, most tedious coup ever. You wouldn’t believe the lies and denials that we have to put up with.
Did you really try to poison Mnangagwa with ice cream? Nice. Even your assassination attempts are classy.
None of this clumsy stabbing in the leg with an arsenic-tipped umbrella for you. Well done. One must appear to be sophisticated at all costs.
How is Robert bearing up? He seemed a bit tired of late, taking spontaneous naps while talking and even walking. I don’t suppose his health matters much to you any longer. What a tremendous weight off your mind, let alone your hips.
It couldn’t have been easy being married to a 138-year-old man.
Does he still wake up in the middle of the night and order Winston Churchill to be shot?
Where are you, by the way? I hope you’re on holiday somewhere nice. You certainly deserve a break. One minute you’re shaking your booty to a North Korean marching song on ZBC while picking out an outfit for your inauguration and the next you’re hiding in a laundry cupboard.
Apparently you have a farm in the south of Namibia. You should go there. You’ll love it.
Okay, Keetmanshoop isn’t exactly Singapore in terms of shopping and health care, but there are a lot of bottle stores and, well, that’s about it.
Do your two gorgeous boys realise they’re going to have to get real jobs now? Poor little things. They must be devastated.
Still and all. Keetmanshoop is a far healthier environment for Chatunga and Robert jr than, say, Chikurubi Prison.
Try to interest them in sheep farming. It’s better than alcoholism. Not really, but don’t tell them that.
Don’t let the fire go out of those crazy black eyes of yours. I’m a big fan. Not big enough for you to come and live with me, I should point out. I am partial to the mad ones but, Grace, you’re next level and I’m just not ready for that right now.
What you could do, though, is worm your way into our president’s rotten little heart and become his next wife.
If you could bring Robert Mugabe down, you can bring Jacob Zuma down.
You needn’t even worry about our army coming for you. There aren’t enough mutton curry pies in the world to entice them from their bungalows and sick beds.
It’ll probably be us, the common herd, who will have to trundle off to the Union Buildings sighing and complaining.
We’re quite easy to buy off, though. Offer us more public holidays and fewer roadblocks and you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want. Just leave us alone. We’re very tired.
Pamberi ne Gucci!