Locked out of combined nuke deal
Durban POISON
DEAR Comrade Vladimir, Putin of all Putins, Ruler of Russia, Emperor of Eurasia, Capturer of Crimea, Nemesis of the Balkans, Vlad the Impala and Brightest Tsar of All, I throw my unworthy self at your feet.
While I am down there, allow me to apologise for this week’s disastrous court ruling that dashed Russia’s hopes of covering our countryside with nuclear power stations. Yes, I know we had an agreement, but what happened is not our government’s fault.
None of us wanted to have to rely on the filthy wind or stupid sun for power. The problem lies with our courts. Unlike your country, we are still struggling to get the right people into the judiciary. Give us time.
If you are going to bomb us, please aim for the courts. The Western Cape High Court in particular is a hotbed of antinuclear, pro-marijuana snowflakes.
If your missiles can’t reach Cape Town, send in the navy. Your men can come ashore at Camps Bay under cover of lunchtime.
I expect that our president is deeply embarrassed by the latest turn of events. I don’t just mean financially embarrassed either, although it will take some explaining to the wives why they might have to wait a bit longer for their R50million apiece.
When Comrade Zuma got his men with pens to sign a co-operation agreement with your Rosatom heavies, he wasn’t to know it was unconstitutional and unlawful. For him to know that, he would’ve had to ask someone.
He is a very busy man, our president. He doesn’t have time to go around asking people for advice. Also, he had to fire his finance minister for refusing to make duplicates of the keys to the Treasury.
So he got a combination lock and a new minister who can’t remember the combination. We’re not even back to square one. We’re just going in circles.
Our then idiot energy minister Tina someone-or-other – who is undoubtedly still an idiot but has since been fired and her name expunged from mortal memory – signed the secret deal with your guys last year.
No problem there. Secret deals are good. However, we have a handful of people in this country who haven’t emigrated to Australia and who inexplicably believe they are entitled to question what their government does. This often leads to court cases and red faces in high places.
You don’t have this problem. If anyone questions the Politburo, or whatever you call your inner circle these days, you get someone to cut their legs off. Not personally, obviously. You can’t be spending your days despatching brutes with chainsaws to sort out every unhinged bolshevik when you have a royal flush in a high stakes game of political poker in Syria while simultaneously toying with that kandy-coated tangerine-flake unstreamlined warbaby in the White House.
I have a confession to make. “What?” I hear you shout. “Without even being tortured?” Sorry. This is no time for jokes.
Thing is, I stopped following Russian politics when Yeltsin stabbed Gorbachev in the forehead with a broken glass. A waste of good red wine if you ask me.
So you’ll forgive me when I say I thought the Communist Party was still in charge. You won’t? I didn’t think so. You are not a man to whom forgiveness comes easily. Not your fault. That’s what happens when you’re breast-fed up to the age of 16.
Your Communist Party got 13% in the last elections. Ours didn’t even stand. Hell, the general secretary can barely stand. I see your party, United Russia, is firmly in control. Well done.
Our ANC is very dominant, too, even though President Zuma is still looking for his machine-gun and doesn’t ride horses with his shirt off. Not while on duty, anyway. We don’t know what he rides while he’s on holiday. He might not even wear trousers, for all we know.
I hate to quote Wikipedia but they have proved marginally more reliable than tea leaves and bonethrowing, and they say that United Russia “has no coherent ideology; however, it embraces specific politicians and officials with a variety of political views who support the administration”.
It’s uncanny how similar this is to our ANC. The only difference is that we embrace anyone with a variety of ways to launder backhanders and… oh. Wikipedia knows about the chainsaws.
I have to ask you something, Comrade President. Does United Russia also rely heavily on the support of the benighted proletariat and amateur agronomists less familiar with the Dow Jones Index than they are with the goat/exchange rate?
We call it the rural vote. I suppose in your country you’d call it the Ural vote. It doesn’t matter. The point is, we’re both big fans of a multiparty dictatorship based on ignorance and fear.
But let us return to matters nuclear, since it is quite likely the only interest the Kremlin has in us. Or rather, had in us.
I was shocked when Judge Lee Bozalek – if that’s his real name – ruled in favour of Earthlife Africa Johannesburg and the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute.
Shocked because two shadowy organisations nobody has ever heard of succeeded in depriving me and my friends of 9.6GW of nuclear energy. I don’t know if that’s a week’s worth or what. I don’t know what a GW is. VW, I know. And 9.6? That’s a low number. It doesn’t sound like a good deal for R1 trillion.
For that kind of money I’d expect at least 75 000GWS per person, per day. With a free bag and maybe a T-shirt.
Comrade Vlad, perhaps you’re looking for answers and nobody at the Union Buildings or even at head office in Saxonwold is taking your calls. Or, if the bribes have already been paid, maybe you’re the one not taking calls. Either way, it’s understandable.
I think I know what happened. The case has been dragging on for 18 months and Judge Bozalek shut the whole thing down because he had to get home and start the braai. Also, he might be Ukrainian.
Apparently, the whole shebang was meant to be debated in Parliament long before those agreements were signed with invisible ink in an unlit room on a moonless night in the middle of the darkest month of the year, thus “flouting democratic processes”.
Oh, please. I can’t speak for Russia, but we are a nation of flouters. We flout at the drop of a cat. I fully expect a Floutist Party to contest the next election. I’d certainly vote for them.
Besides, aren’t parliamentary debates more for the benefit of the international investor community than the great unwashed? After all, United Russia has a 76% majority in parliament and the ANC – which can’t be called united in any sense whatsoever – has 62%.
With those odds, it’s not even gambling. The house is guaranteed to win every time. The game is rigged and it has stayed that ever since the Ancient Greeks invented democracy and sodomy.
It is even more saddening that this kangaroo court of ours jumped to its rabid conclusions on Chernobyl Day, a day the world sets aside to celebrate nuclear power and tries to forget the men and women who died doing whatever it was they were doing when the number four reactor reacted badly to a late-night safety test.
We all react badly to being tested late at night. It’s no reason to be anti-nuclear.
Comrade, I urge you not to give up on us. We have other things we can give you. Would you like an elephant? I see you on the cover of GQ magazine wearing nothing but a pair of armadillo boots and ivory spurs, urging a giant tusker into a full-blooded gallop.
Maybe heading into a fight with a Zimbabwean riding a hippo. I don’t want to tell you what to do. You have your own fantasies.
I’ll pop in for vodkas next time I’m in Moscow.
Do svidaniya!