In Cyril’s own words, minus the speechwriters?
Opening of parliament speeches should be easy if the government did its work in the past year or so. Obviously ours has not done the work and President Cyril Ramaphosa will have sweaty palms as he directs his team to prepare for Thursday’s big speech.
We can expect the meeting with his closest aides to work out like this: “I wonder why we have to run around every time the occasion comes round? We’ve been in this office since 2018, and we’ve learnt about the difficulty of doing things the way this government does them. Where is the guy who wrote my 2018 Thuma Mina speech? That was brilliant, don’t you think, Steyn? I wonder what my takeaway would have been had Hugh Masekela not died that year, as the Thuma Mina moment might not have landed as it did.
“I have to deliver a key speech without an economics adviser. I really thought Trudy would love being inside the belly of the beast. It is what it is. The difficult thing about the speech is this whole government of national unity set-up. Our ministers have not provided me with anything I can highlight. I shouldn’t call them ‘our’ ministers as the ministers from the DA and other parties are our ministers, too. But, I mean, this cabinet is three weeks old and the DA guys are steaming ahead with their ideas and plans. Look at Gayton. Hahaha, it is funny how he is riling everyone up. South Africa is full of possibilities if you consider that this guy is a convicted criminal. My wish is to deliver a speech that sets the tone for the next five years. We need to crank up the economy. But my problem is that our guys, the ANC guys ... I don’t know what they are busy with.
“In the past five years we relied on gimmicks to get us a decent speech. Remember, it was Pravin who saved me once, and suggested we announce the appointment of a chief restructuring officer for Eskom. Hahaha, the markets loved the idea. Say what you like about the man, he is good with propaganda. The following year I had to call Sipho Nkosi on the day of the speech, to appoint him as our red-tape tsar. It was like throwing a bone to the dog, while we bought time to work out a way to reduce red tape. I met Sipho six months after the announcement ... he still had no clue how to move with this damn thing. He’s a wonderful entrepreneur, but some of these guys will let you down. You have to appoint them and still do the job for them. Thoko Didiza helped me at agriculture when she came up with some of the ideas for my speeches. The public had no clue they were just early-stage plans.
“The media is just hostile but clueless. Where’s my iPad? I want to show you guys something. Remember when the US president, no, no, not this one, I mean Roosevelt ... We have to quote him and Ben Okri. Anything we can draw from Deng Xiaoping’s books? Busani has a few copies in his office.
“Did you see when the guy forgot his train of thought against Trump in the presidential debate? Hahaha, it’s so sad how the Democrats could move from an Obama to someone like Biden. Obama was a smart guy but he loved attention a bit too much. I spent some time with him when we buried Madiba. I was the master of ceremonies when he spoke at FNB. That’s when we had that fake sign language interpreter. Oh, we mustn’t forget to include a sign language element in the speech, I want to use all the 12 official languages.
“I honestly don’t know what to do with the national dialogue thing. It’s bloody Thabo’s idea. The guy is a self-centred Aids denialist. Someone please set up a Teams meeting with Enoch. You know the reason Tito is no longer the finance minister is because he ignored my edits to the budget. Sometimes these finance ministers behave like a law unto themselves. I need something fundable that we can announce on Thursday. I don’t know why the basic income grant has not been implemented yet.
“We have to make this speech trend, guys. Is Athi in the office? I need all my team members around me when we do these kind of things. Call Rudi as well. What can we do to make Operation Vulindlela trend? OV was Tito’s concept. These guys from exile had all the time in the world to study this stuff. You can mock his cooking but the guy knows his economics. What I want to do is create a South Africa that works. Every time I go to Singapore, I’m left in awe. Why can’t we be like that? Yes, Steyn is right. I’d like to visit Dubai again. The Arabs don’t play. Has Barbara given us her transport synopsis? Where is my iPad?”