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Thursday. World Addiction Day. I’m watching Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande on TV telling the students rioting at the University of the Witwatersrand, University of KwaZulu-Natal, University of Cape Town and everywhere else that 8% is it and they shouldn’t hold their breath while waiting for fees to fall.
Blade looks irritated, but sober.
There’s a strip across Blade’s chest telling viewers that 15% of South Africans are addicted to drugs.
That figure doesn’t include those of us who are addicted to booze, the legal drug. Add that up and we’re clearly a nation which is off its face, which perhaps explains some of the political decisions we take.
After all, Thursday marks eight years to the day since Thabo Mbeki resigned as president after getting the boot from the ANC for allegedly using the organs of the state to stop his then deputy, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, from taking over.
Eight years have passed since TM1, as Mbeki was known in political circles, fell on his sword.
Seems more like 20, if you ask me, given the shit that has gone down since TM1 took the bullet.
TM1 was a different cat. Lotsa long sentences, suits and those striped banker shirts with white collars.
Big words. Big ideas, some of them weird. There weren’t a lot of giggles from the dude, who was clearly reading a dictionary or something when the other comrades were learning to sing and toyi-toyi.
TM1 knew his thing, though, apart from when he sat up all night chatting with nutters on the net.
TM1 once smoked a whole pack of my Camel Filters at a meeting at the National Union of Metalworkers’ Durban offices back in the day.
Chained them one after the other.
General Siphiwe Nyanda sat there burning pieces of paper with my matches on the metal trestle table. Weird cat, that.
I woulda still dug TM1 though, if only it weren’t for the small matter of depriving hundreds of thousands of people of life-saving antiretroviral meds.
TM1 used organs of state to screw Zuma, got caught and never got to finish his second term. No three strikes what-what. Out. Don’t come Monday.
Zuma’s given the organs of state to his bras from Saxonwold.
The man from Nxamalala’s gutted the criminal justice system to make sure he sleeps soundly at his R246 million state-funded retirement home when his third term’s completed.
Baba’s played pinball with our economy and his Muppets are already planning how to rewrite the Constitution and get him in for term three.
Like I say, we’re a nation off its face.
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